greyskywrites

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon XIII.

Afterlife

4.2k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Lucian

The world is asleep under the snow, one moon after midwinter and at least another moon away from the thaw, when Lucian wakes before dawn and he knows. He sits up, rubbing his back and letting out a breath. It had started some time in the night, but the pains had come and gone before. They’re still coming now.

Eadwin stirs behind him, touches his arm. “What is it?”

Lucian tilts his head back, face toward the ceiling, trying to keep his breathing steady. “When the sun comes up,” he says, “you’ll want to get Sister Fiona.”

Eadwin starts up and Lucian holds out a hand. “Slow down. I don’t think we’ll need her before you have enough light to see by, and I don’t want you killing a horse or breaking your neck in the dark. Just—sit with me a while.”

Eadwin comes around to his side of the bed, sliding a hand across Lucian’s back. “I don’t know how you’re so calm.”

“No sense in getting worked up now before we’ve even started,” Lucian sighs.

“I’m fucking terrified,” Eadwin says.

Lucian laughs. “Language, Brother.” He only calls Eadwin ‘brother’ to tease him. He leans into Eadwin’s side, thinking of the day he woke up in that hospital and Eadwin had clearly been at his side all night. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says, “send someone else when there’s light, I don’t want you to leave me.”

Eadwin takes his hand and sits with him until the light outside goes from black to silvery gray. He does a decent job of concealing his worry, except that his grip tightens whenever Lucian reacts to a pain.

Lucian pulls up the moonstone that never leaves his neck anymore, running the smooth sides under his fingers. Eadwin kisses his wrist and goes to rouse the others. Lucian is hardly alone but that Fortune appears, pulling the blankets off the bed and making the room ready. “All of my children were born in this room,” she says, “and I never lost one that made it this far, so I’ll pray some of that luck rubs off on you.” She draws the curtains against any spirits that might look in, and walks a candle in a full circuit around the room, muttering a prayer and making the sign in each corner. Lucian hears the creak of the gate and the hooves in snow as someone leaves.

He thinks of the Queen of Heaven giving birth to the first people in the dark underground, in the caverns of what had once been her husband’s body. He paces restlessly, keeping close to the bed so he can grasp the posts when an ache becomes too much. Mother, he thinks, not knowing if he’s praying to the Heavenly or the earthly one, the one who died birthing him—please I have so much life left to live.

How long, how long has he spent bargaining with Heaven? With ghosts?

“Where’s Eadwin?” he asks. “I want him here.” Eadwin was with him when he tried to take his own life, was with him when Wulfric would have killed them both, Lucian needs him there now. This is the threshold of the world, between life and the road after, and if he is going to risk falling on the wrong side of that threshold he does not want to spend his last moments without Eadwin.

“Men don’t belong in the birthing room.” Fortune says it without thinking, only seems to realize her mistake as the last word leaves her lips.

“When you figure out how to do this without me, you let me know,” Lucian says. “I want him here. He put me in this condition, he can damn well be here for the result.” He has always been safest when Eadwin was there.

Fortune lets out a breath and goes to the door, shouting for Eadwin.

Eadwin is swift about coming back up the steps, and he stays with Lucian as Fortune makes things ready for the midwife. Lucian wraps his prayer beads around his hand, the rose medal clasped in his palm.

Sister Fiona arrives with two other nuns, and Hanne brings hot water and soap for washing. Veils are taken off to the small hair caps beneath, sleeves are pinned back and aprons pulled over habits. Hands are washed and purifications performed. Prayers are said, with only a little stumbling where the written prayer says Holy Mother watch over your daughter and Sister Fiona corrects herself to say watch over your son. Sanctified rosewater is drawn in circles over Lucian’s forehead, his belly.

Eadwin holds tightly to his hands, and Lucian thinks of that grip as his mooring, the thing holding him to hope and safety and life. He focuses as much of his attention as he can on the grip of their hands together, thinking that he cannot have come all this way to die here. I am going to live, he thinks, and so will my daughter.

She comes into the world with a scream, and Lucian sags back against Eadwin’s chest, trying to catch his breath. Eadwin wraps both arms around him, kissing his temple.

Their daughter shrieks while she’s washed clean, and when she’s placed in Lucian’s arms. The thin wisps of hair on her head are redder than he would have expected—he had envisioned her with Eadwin’s dark hair. Her tiny fists are clenched tight, her face contorted in all the fury and dismay such a tiny thing can muster. Lucian laughs, and draws her up to kiss her head. “My little fighter,” he murmurs, “you should be angry, to find the world this cold.”

When Sister Fiona is satisfied that neither of them are in any immediate danger, she washes her hands and gathers up what she needs for the blessing. “What will you call her?”

Lucian looks up. “Luna.” He’s given it a great deal of thought, ever since he was put in the convent at Grenacre. When Margaret spent every day reading Eadwin’s prayer book, the one still inscribed with the name he took as a brother of the Moon: Eadwin Lunadora. He had kept that name close to his heart, when he had no guarantee that he would ever see Eadwin again. “Her name is Luna.”

Sister Fiona nods, and performs the blessing there at the bedside, sprinkling Luna with rosewater, praying for her good health and long life under the protection of the Queen of Heaven and Her angels.

“Sisters, have you eaten?” Fortune asks. “Hanne will have made something.”

They leave Lucian and Eadwin for a moment, while Lucian adjusts his nightshirt to bring Luna to his breast. Eadwin gets up and draws a blanket around them, pausing to stroke Lucian’s hair.

“I’m alright,” Lucian sighs. “We’re alright.”

“If I may be frank,” Eadwin says, “I would prefer to do this as few times as possible.”

Lucian laughs, smiles. “What, you don’t want to keep going until we get a son?”

“I don’t care about having a son, I care about you.” He strokes Lucian’s cheek, and drops a hand to caress Luna’s head. “She’ll look like you, I think.”

“Ah, all babies look the same,” Lucian murmurs. “Stay with me.”

“Always,” Eadwin murmurs, getting back into the bed and wrapping an arm around him. He traces circles on Lucian’s shoulder, murmurs, “Let him drink my life’s blood, let him eat my flesh.”

Lucian turns his face toward Eadwin’s. “Let it redden his lips, let him suck the marrow from my bones—”

“—and dress himself in my skin,” Eadwin murmurs, stroking Lucian’s cheek. “For I give my life to him, to keep as he wills, and in the belly of my lord—”

“I will be reborn,” Lucian finishes, and tips his face up for a kiss.

Abigayle brings a tray of food up, eager to see her new granddaughter. “Ah,” she murmurs, “she looks just like my girls did.”

Eadwin takes a drowsing Luna down to let the household see her while Lucian sleeps, Sister Fiona keeping an eye on him while he does. He dreams himself as Margaret, meeting their mother again as she was in the moon mass. They are sitting in the church, the candles all lit and filling the space with golden light. Her mother strokes her hair which is still cut short, and smiles. “You’ve done well for yourself, darling. Are you happy?”

Margaret nods. “Yes.”

“You have so many people to care for you here,” her mother says. “I’m glad you don’t feel so alone, anymore.”

He wakes when Eadwin comes back, settling into the bed with the baby against his chest. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s alright,” Lucian murmurs, moving to tuck up against his side. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Eadwin slides an arm around his shoulders, and Lucian falls asleep watching Luna breathe.

#.

Spring comes, and Lucian goes out to set snares for rabbits. The deer will be too skinny from the winter, and all of them are sick of venison. Luna rides in a sling on his back, quiet and astonished by everything in the forest. He sings to her as they walk back along the river, keeping an eye out for signs of bears beginning to stir.

Luna’s hair is coming in red-gold, but her eyes are dark like Eadwin’s. She’ll be a haunting beauty when she grows up. Lucian means to teach her to hunt.

He has found someone in the village to teach him how to make arrow shafts, and the smith is willing to trade arrowheads for meat. Even so, he’s careful not to fire at anything he doesn’t think he can get the arrow back from. The ducks will be back soon, Tom says, with a wink and a sort of nudge.

Lucian marks where the wild hazel grows, and cuts the heads of green ferns still tightly coiled to bring back with the mushrooms and early greens. “We’ll make this your second home,” he says to Luna. “Nobody will be able to make a prisoner of you if you know how to survive the woods.”

It’s been not quite a year since he left Grenacre for good, and even he sometimes forgets what he used to be. Not Margaret, but a lady. Someone who wore silk and was waited on. It feels like a fanciful story. The only thing he misses is having someone else to clean the stables.

Some great old tree came down in the winter, clearing a sunny stretch in the thick canopy. Lucian marks its location to bring Will and Tom back so they can cut it for firewood, and sits with his back against the trunk while he nurses Luna. He knows Eadwin will worry the longer they’re out, but he can’t quite bring himself to hurry back. Not yet. Out here in the forest is the only place he gets true quiet anymore, his only conversation partners the birds and the frogs.

He looks down at Luna, thinks of the vision he had of swallowing the golden eye. “What do you think?” he asks. “In a few years, should I eat the other?” His blood had hardly come back but that it stopped again, and he’s going to see Sister Fiona to have that taken care of. It’s too soon to have another.

Luna sleeps on his back as Lucian makes his way back into the village. Eadwin has his eyes on a plot nearer the forest, further from the river, where he says they could build a new house. A bigger house, with a proper barn for the horses, perhaps a cow or two, and a garden where they can grow flowers, not just vegetables. Lucian says he will just be glad to have a proper bed.

The sisters at the church are installing bee hives to fund their work. Luna’s name and the date of her birth is written down in the books there, and in the front of Eadwin’s prayer book. It’s written as Brewster, though people have taken to calling Lucian—and Luna by extension—Hunter.

Eadwin has also written down the day of their marriage, otherwise only recorded in Grenacre abbey under Lucian’s old name. They say Lady Margaret died of a broken heart.

Joan and Sky are planting the garden under Abigayle’s watchful eye. Peas and beans and carrots and beets and lettuce and cabbage. “Oh, bless you,” she says, when Lucian shows her the contents of his basket. “We’ll get these mushrooms to drying.”

“You’d think if Uncle Eadwin spent so long in the Moons, we’d be growing our own mushrooms,” Joan says, shaking seeds into her palm out of a jar.

“Once he has an inch of space, we probably will,” Lucian says. “He means to sell them.” Eadwin has taken to keeping his books like he keeps his prayers. Others in the village have begun to pay him a fee to make and keep books for them, hoping to see the same improvements as their own household. He can’t build a cathedral—but maybe a house.

#.

They build a house up against a hill. There’s a special outbuilding for the brewing, a bath with a great cauldron for heating water, and a barn for the horses. They find a stud to breed the mare to, and she drops a beautiful lively colt. They buy a pregnant milk cow who gives a heifer. Everyone grows a little fatter on butter and cream.

There’s an enormous garden, with strawberry rows and flowers along the edges. Young fruit trees stretch toward the sun. There is a particular lot where Eadwin cultivates mushrooms, and when it rains the ground explodes in a riot of shapes and colors. They buy a small barge to take their own goods down the river to the market.

It is in that new house that their son is born, three years after Luna. Lucian names him Eadwin, which the elder Eadwin protests, but Lucian won’t be moved. They call him Little Ed. He will be the last child, and his hair will grow in dark over grey eyes.

Luna is wild and keen, and she grows like a weed. Every spring she goes out to check the snares with Lucian, and every autumn they go to the wild hazel trees to look for nuts. She knows the names of the trees before she knows her letters—and in learning her letters she tries Eadwin’s patience at every turn.

When Lucian asks, the sisters at the church write to their orders, looking for fragments of information, recipes and magics that have been collected by the church. They look over everything together, and Lucian decides what he is willing to try.

The potion he’s meant to drink is so vile they switch almost immediately to a salve. It makes him smell rather noticeably like pine resin and horse sweat, but only for a few hours in the morning which he can usually spend out of doors. He thinks for a while that it must not be doing anything at all—until in the middle of a sentence his voice cracks in such a heinous way that in spite of his valiant efforts Eadwin cannot keep a straight face.

Oddly, Lucian’s gradual transformation seems to make their neighbors less confused about him. Luna thinks the appearance of hair on his cheeks and its thickening on his arms means he’s turning into a fox or (because she likes them) a squirrel. She is deeply disappointed to be told otherwise.

Alone in their bed at night, Eadwin still claims Lucian will be the death of him, though he’s perfectly able to keep up. Their bigger house has thicker walls.

He watches his face change in the mirror, watches Luna and Little Ed grow and thinks how strange it is when news comes to them as if from another world. Lady Wulfwyn of Eagletop has become notorious for turning down marriage proposals, which her lord uncle refuses to do anything about. (They hear of this because Lord Andrew’s son is the latest in a string of failed suitors.) Lord Aethelric, it is said, keeps a lover openly—but he also won’t marry. Eadwin mutters that it will make it difficult to find Everard and Mildred good matches when they’re older.

Eadwin still wakes before sunrise every morning to pray at the icons on the wall. They’ve collected them gradually—the Queen of Heaven, the Moon, St. Luce. Around their windows they’ve had roses painted, and falcons and black stags. The rose bushes in their garden climb higher every year. Lucian prays his beads in the quite moments of the afternoon while his children sleep. He reads the poetry Eadwin wrote for him while they were separated.

Eadwin still writes when he can’t sleep, which is usually when the moon is full and bright outside their window and he has no mass to tend to. Lucian will wake and find him still at his desk. If it is a good day, his pen will be scratching at the paper like soldiers marching to battle. If it is a bad one, Eadwin will be staring out the window at the garden and the forest beyond, and Lucian will bully him back into the bed to sleep. “It’s not me that will be the death of you if you don’t rest.” But the children— “But nothing. They are overrun with relatives.” Especially when Bree and Joan make good matches for themselves and take to their husband’s homes. There will always be somewhere in this village for Luna and Ed.

He watches Eadwin sleep sometimes, turned onto his side and breathing softly under the blankets, and thinks of Margaret’s father summoning her in Grenacre, the first time she saw Eadwin standing there as impatient as a crow watching the butcher and trying to hide it, spinning tales for her father to persuade him to part with her. The way his gaze had flitted to Margaret’s measuring her expression, adjusting accordingly. As though they had already understood each other.

Chance and accident that they met at all. Lucian wonders what Lady Catherine thought of it when news of the scandal reached her. He wonders where in Grenacre those black antlers were hung. He imagines them high over the mantle in the dining hall, a reaching black shadow over Harry’s head. The hide still hangs in their bedroom, Luna lives in hope of seeing a black deer.

Autumn comes, and Lucian goes out hunting.

#.

Eadwin

He is up late working on the books while Lucian cuts new fletching for his arrows. He bought a parcel of falcon feathers when last they went to market, and he is gradually replacing damaged fletching with it.

Setting aside his tools, Lucian asks, “Do you ever miss her?”

“Who?” Eadwin asks, ascertaining the later hour by the position of the moon in the sky and the low height of his candle. Perhaps he should put away his pen. It has been a long day and Luna resists her lessons every time the sun comes out, a behavior which Lucian is in the habit of indulging.

“Margaret.”

“Is she gone?” Eadwin asks. “I thought we spoke just last week.”

“You know what I mean,” Lucian says. His voice has a low warmth it didn’t used to have, though sometimes the way he was trained to speak as a lady slips through.

Eadwin turns to look at him, at the trimmed beard that has come in so nicely, the changed shape of him. The beard makes him look older, which Eadwin thinks is why he let it grow. “No,” he says, “everything I love about her is still there in you. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy.” He holds out a hand, drawing Lucian to his side. “Have I done something that made you think otherwise?”

“No, it’s only—sometimes I feel so distant from her, and I wore her name until the day we were married.” Lucian slides an arm around Eadwin’s shoulders.

“Before we reached Eagletop, I thought that you would have been happier if you were born a man.”

Lucian pauses, looks at him. “You never said a word.”

“That’s not the sort of thing you say to a lady,” Eadwin says. “Particularly not when every time someone else says it to her she looks absolutely miserable.”

“Not even after she says the Queen of Heaven showed her what she ought to be?”

“You’d also just told me you were with child, so my mind was preoccupied with other things.” He shifts in his chair, pulls Lucian into his lap. “In any case, you were right.”

“About what, specifically?”

“That I should have just stolen you for myself from the beginning.”

Lucian smiles and kisses his temple. “Come to bed, thief.”

The sandalwood perfume is long ago run out, but Eadwin’s come to know the scent of him beneath that. Lucian is covered now in fine red hair, folding in among the pale scar-like strips on his belly that came after the children. Every fold and scar and bruise—Eadwin thinks he knows Lucian’s body better than his own, down to the scent and taste of him.

And it is still his preference to touch Lucian until he begs—or curses Eadwin, depending on his mood.

#.

Lucian

It’s spring, six years after he left Grenacre when Lucian first hears the song. They’re in town after going to market, staying the night in a tavern before going home in the morning. He has left the children with Fortune and Abigayle.

A man is sat by the fire, plucking at his harp and singing for pennies tossed into a hat. He has a good voice, but Lucian isn’t really listening until he hears that name. Lady Margaret.

It starts with quite the scene; a beautiful young woman locked away in a tower (Grenacre never had any towers) by her father who would share her beauty with no man for fear of how his only daughter would be ruined. Lucian gets up from the table to move closer and listen. In the song, Lady Margaret spends her days wishing wistfully for a rescuer. A young and handsome monk comes to ask for her father to part with her to marry his lord. The song paints him as a talented deceiver, who never has any intention of delivering the lady to her betrothed. (Wulfric and Eagletop go entirely unnamed.) Then the song has it that the monk seduces and despoils Lady Margaret, wins her heart and persuades her to kill her betrothed. Her father dies of a broken heart over the scandal (Lucian can’t help it, he snorts) and her brother cloisters her in a convent. The treacherous monk abandons her, and Lady Margaret throws herself from the church spire, leaving her bastard daughter a church orphan to be raised by nuns. He would be impressed that they guessed it was a daughter, but he suspects it only sounds more tragic to have a motherless bastard girl who will never be claimed and who will be redeemed by growing up a nun.

“Did you write it yourself?” Lucian asks, when the song is finished.

“I did,” the man says.

“Your poetry’s not bad, but the story is all wrong.” Lucian flips him a coin. “Grenacre Hall doesn’t have any towers.”

The man looks at him, puzzled, but Lucian just smiles and goes back to the table with the others. Eadwin had been out, tending to the horses. “What’s that look?” he asks.

Lucian leans in to lower his voice. “Did you know you’re a dangerous seducer and known deceiver?”

“Am I, now?” He raises his brows. “Is that how we met?”

“According to the song.” Lucian takes a drink. “I think you should write a version, just for us.”

“I was never much for music.”

“A poem, then.”

In the morning when they untether their barge to turn back upriver, which will take them nearly all day, silver ribbons of mist are rising up off the dark trees. Lazy black eels disappear into the murk when the barge is disturbed, some as thick as Lucian’s arm. The Penbreak is quiet today, calm and smooth to disguise the cold and strong currents beneath. Even in the height of summer it’s cold enough to freeze a person who fell in. (The fish taste just as muddy as Lucian suspected they would.)

Lucian hums the tune of the song under his breath, wondering how many of the songs he knows are about someone, and how much any of them are true. The black stag hunt would make a good song, if anyone who cared knew the story. He can imagine Lord Aethelric commissioning one, though he can’t imagine how fantastical it would be.

The barge falls into a lull when they have nothing to talk about, and Lucian watches the trees. Mostly its birds they’ll see along the shore, the occasional bear.

They come around a bend, and a doe lifts her head from the far bank to watch them. There are two small fawns at her side, teetering about on their little legs. One is red, its spots bright and white. The other is black as charcoal.

Lucian watches them in silence, not wanting to spook the doe. He hears the others fall still as they notice. “Well,” Tom whispers, “would you look at that.”

The doe makes a sound to draw her fawns’ attention, and they fade into the trees like shadows.

Lucian glances back at Eadwin, and smiles.

End.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon XII.

Hearth and Home

6.4k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Eadwin

They arrive at Oxbow just after last light, in spite of their hard pace. Lucian draws his hood over his head to disguise his short hair while Eadwin gets down to bargain with the gatekeeper. This one imagines himself to be a stickler for the rules, which will make this a great deal more tedious than it needs to be. He makes a show of arguing for a while before her gestures back at Lucian. “Please, my wife and I are traveling alone, coming back from a pilgrimage. She’s with child, what kind of husband will I be if I can’t find a roof for her to sleep under?”

This finally seems to move the gatekeeper who (begrudgingly, and with complaint) says they ought to plan their travel better to get lodgings before sundown. And don’t pilgrims know they ought to be on foot?

As he rides past, Lucian puts on his softest voice, the most placating one Eadwin has heard him use. “Thank you for your kindness.” The gatekeeper seems suitably abashed.

They take a room at a tavern that is small, but clean. They see to their horses and eat a dinner that is slightly better than mediocre, largely because it is hot. In their room, Lucian stretches out on the bed with a groan, hair fanning out on the pillow. Eadwin lays beside him, tracing the line of Lucian’s jaw. “I missed the way you carry yourself when you aren’t trying to be a lady.”

Lucian turns his head and smiles. “It feels incredible.”

There’s a satisfaction in the familiarity growing between them, the knowing just how to touch Lucian to make him greedy. Lucian clutches him close and Eadwin winds him tight until Lucian curses and digs his fingernails into Eadwin’s shoulder.

“Oh,” Lucian sighs, drawing his hand down Eadwin’s cheek. “Oh, my priest. My blackbird.” He draws Eadwin down for a kiss. “My husband.”

Lucian touches the chain still around his neck, with the moonstone and the ring. “I wondered if you wanted these back.”

Eadwin traces his finger along the chain, warm against Lucian’s skin. “I want you to keep the moonstone,” he says. “I gave it to you for luck. To keep you safe.”

Lucian gazes at him a moment and pulls the clasp around to unhook the chain and slide the ring free. “Give me your hand.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Give me your hand,” Lucian says again, more insistently. “You gave this to me to say you were coming back.” He slides the ring into place on Eadwin’s finger. “Now I’ll pray that you never have to give it to me again.” He pulls Eadwin’s hand up, kisses his fingers.

Eadwin stirs twice in the night, glad to find Lucian still beside him. He kisses the back of Lucian’s shoulder, sliding an arm around him. He wakes early, the east-facing window putting the sunlight directly into his eyes.

They eat some of what Mother Robina sent with them and ride out just as the day is beginning to warm. With his bow over his shoulder Lucian really does look like a brigand, only missing a feather in his cap, and if it means other travelers avoid them Eadwin won’t complain of it.

In the morning there are thunderheads on the horizon, and by late afternoon the storm comes crashing down on them, pursuing them into the first village they come across. Eadwin might have pushed on for the next town, but it would be reckless and stupid to ride in this weather, and Lucian makes no complaint about trading a few coins to spend the night in a sheep farmer’s barn. They’re fed on lamb stew and make a bed by throwing a coarse blanket down on the hay while the wind rattles the timbers and the thunder booms overhead, their horses shifting nervously.

Lucian lays with his arms behind his head, watching the lightning flash between the gaps in the barn walls. “When I was a child and frightened of storms, Felix told me it was only the angels sparring in heaven, sparks flying off their swords.”

Eadwin laughs softly. “My mother said the Queen of Heaven was moving her furniture.”

Perhaps for the first time, when Lucian reaches for him it’s only to sleep. He’s not completely immune to the pace of their travel, then. Eadwin holds an arm around his shoulders while the storm rages on. At least no one can follow them in this weather.

In the morning the sheep farmer rouses them when he comes out to milk the cow. He brings them raspberries gathered by his children and boiled eggs and a cut of bread from his wife. He refuses to accept any more payment, so Lucian slips a silver coin into the chicken house before they leave, among the eggs. He’s in a remarkably good mood for someone who slept in a barn, singing to himself and watching the sky as they ride.

Lucian extends an arm to point to the northwest. “Hawks,” he says. “Looks like a mated pair.”

#.

Their third night away from Grenacre they spend at a tavern in a town near Wolfwater. Eadwin thinks the pace must be beginning to wear on Lucian, but he won’t utter a word of complaint. He only grows quieter, slouches a bit more when they sit down to eat. Sleeps heavier.

He perks up when instruments come out and music starts up. Eadwin remembers something Lucian said when they first met, that he loved to dance but was seldom able to. Eadwin leans over to tell him that a woman at the bar has been looking their way, and Lucian should ask her to dance. Lucian looks at him in surprise and confusion. “What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. Go on and dance.”

After a little hesitation, Lucian seems to slip quite naturally into the role, sliding over to the woman with that crooked grin and speaking to her a moment before they both go to dance. Watching them, Eadwin can’t really fathom that Lucian insisted on marrying him, on staying with him. There are so many other paths that could have opened up for Lucian if he had chosen differently.

Could still open up to him, if he changes his mind.

After a time, Lucian leaves his dancing partner by kissing her hand and making her turn red to the tips of her ears. He comes back to the table for a drink and says, “You have to dance with me, next time.”

“She’s going to think you’re quite the scoundrel,” Eadwin says.

“You think so?” Lucian asks, grinning. “I thought for sure she’d figure me out.”

“She might have. That might be why she can’t stop looking at you.” Lucian still believes everyone thinks like the people that raised him.

Lucian looks thoughtful, settling back into his seat. “I don’t know anything about the world from this viewpoint,” he says, finally. “I thought—” He looks embarrassed. “I thought no one would really want me if I was like—this.”

“Even me?”

“Well. You knew me before.”

Eadwin touches Lucian’s hand. “Very little here works the way it does in the noble houses.”

Lucian considers him, slides his fingers through Eadwin’s. “So we needn’t hide our attachment?”

“No.”

“And what I am—isn’t particularly remarkable?”

“You’ll always be remarkable,” Eadwin says with a faint smile. Lucian makes a face at him, his cheeks turning pink. “So are you too embarrassed to dance? Is that it?”

“It shows that you have training,” Eadwin says, “and it will absolutely show that I do not.”

“Oh, don’t say it like that,” Lucian says. “Then I might have to teach you.”

#.

Lucian

It’s different when he goes to bed with Eadwin now. He’s different in how he reaches for Eadwin.

He had worried that being stripped down would remind him too much of what he had been, that he wouldn’t be able to help slipping back into Margaret’s skin—but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, he feels even less like her when he’s naked. He moves differently, wants more boldly, and evidently it has some effect on Eadwin because the way he handles Lucian now reminds him of that first kiss in the hospital, when it seemed as if some fire roared up in Eadwin. As if some restraint has come off of him. It’s the animal way they went together in the village before they reached Eagletop, but without the desperation, only the wanting.

The riding is hard. It’s miserably hard, nothing at all like a long day’s hunting. The next day—and Lucian is keenly aware that Felix’s promised reprieve is running out, if they even made it that far without Harry discovering his escape—he has to stop just after noon, to sit in the shade because the heat is too much. He knows Eadwin is worried about him, and he hates to be the subject of worry.

He lets his head fall back against the trunk of the alder tree, listening to the stream burbling past them. “I wish we could have left in the spring.”

Eadwin strokes Lucian’s hair. “Then it’d be the rain.”

They wait out the heat of the day, and just barely make it to Wolfwater before they lose light. Lucian keeps to their room, brooding. Harry will know soon, if he doesn’t already, and he will send whatever men he has crawling all over the kingdom looking for any rumor of his errant sister. If there’s even a chance that someone has recognized him in the last few days, Harry will know what direction they went in.

Eadwin lays down beside him and Lucian curls into his side. “It was Lady Catherine that sent you to Grenacre, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“I ought to write her a letter of thanks.”

Eadwin laughs softly, pulls an arm around Lucian’s shoulders. “I suspect she’d like her name left out of it.” Lucian props himself up, tracing a hand across Eadwin’s chest. “Tell me about when you were a boy.” He’s been avoiding the subject every time Lucian asks.

Eadwin lets out a long, low breath. He runs a hand down Lucian’s back. “Had we had a church,” he says, “it probably would have been a better place to hide than the woods.” He grimaces and says, “I probably know the nature of a forest as well as you do, but for worse reasons. Gave up on running to my mother’s family, my father would always track me down there.”

He talks about his father, and as ugly as it is Lucian suspects Eadwin is still sparing him the details. The thing that worries him the most, Eadwin says, is that he doesn’t know what his family is like now, and he doesn’t know how they will be received turning up at the door unannounced after so many years.

Lucian strokes Eadwin’s hair, running his fingers through the softening edges where it’s growing longer. He thinks it will soften the severity of Eadwin’s face if it grows too much longer. “I suppose we’ll have to find out.” He bends, kissing Eadwin’s temple.

They are three days out of Wolfwater when they hear the news from some wool traders that—quite unexpectedly—Margaret Beckett has died. There are plenty of rumors as to what, or who might have killed her. That it was by her own hand is a favorite theory, or that she threw herself from the church spire when she found out her lover had either died or abandoned her. At that one, Lucian gets up from the table at the tavern and walks outside into the dark. He can’t tell if he’s laughing or sobbing.

Eadwin follows him out. “Are you alright?”

“I suppose they’re not coming after me,” Lucian says, wiping at his face. “Saints, what a thing to do. I suppose it lets him save face.” A dead disgraced sister is better than a vanished one who ran off with her lover right from under his nose. Lucian lets out a slow breath, feeling at once terribly sad and as though some chain has slipped from his shoulders.

Maybe they’re right, that Margaret is dead. He hasn’t felt the need to wear her name since he took this one. It doesn’t seem right to think of her that way, though. “Go back inside,” he says to Eadwin, “I’ll be alright, I just need a moment.”

Eadwin seems hesitant, but he kisses Lucian’s temple and goes inside. Lucian places both his hands on top of his head, looking up at the dark sky twinkling with stars. Lady Margaret killed her betrothed and then threw herself from the church tower for the loss of her disgraced monk lover, how sad. How romantic. If that rumor grows large enough, someone will write a song about her. A warning tale for girls who don’t want to accept their marriages.

He shakes his head. “Oh, Heavenly Mother, if only they knew,” he murmurs. He lets out a sigh and grasps the moonstone. At least a dead woman can’t be hunted down.

Stepping back inside to the light and warmth of the tavern, he finds Eadwin speaking now to pilgrims. He glances up, some tension going out of his shoulders when he sees Lucian.

Lucian goes over to him, sliding a hand across Eadwin’s shoulder and whispering into his ear, “I’m going to bed. Come up, when you can.”

If this is his afterlife, he will make it into a paradise.

#.

They take a gentler pace now, not riding out quite so early or for so long. They follow the water and wait out the heat of the day on riverbanks and by streams, listening to the birds and the insects and the water rushing over stones. Because he can’t stand to wear a hat unless the sun is in his eyes, streaks of pale gold are appearing on the top layers of Lucian’s hair. Less attractively, the tips of his ears have burned as red as the rest of it.

Eadwin stops when they come upon the place where the water they’ve been following joins a larger river, wide and dark and green even under the cloudless sky. “This is the Penbreak,” he says, “it comes down from the Black Lake in the mountains.” He points downriver, to the northwest. “And that way is home.” He lets out a breath, watching the water.

Lucian reaches out to catch his hand. “Then take me home.”

It takes them another day and a half, riding along the river and following its bends and curves. They camp the night under the shelter of a fallen tree supported by its neighbor. The river grows flatter, muddier, more placid the closer they draw to the end of their journey. Lucian thinks he will not like the fish in this stretch of river very much. The waters in Grenacre were always clear, running through coarse yellow sand.

He has to persuade Eadwin to let him go hunting the morning before they would arrive. “We’re turning up like this, we ought to bring something,” Lucian says. He means: I ought to be able to prove that I’m worth something.

“It’s the chase I don’t like,” Eadwin says. “Or that you’ll get down with a stag who isn’t dead yet and could still hurt you.” It’s the wrong season for taking does, they would have fawns hidden away in the brush.

“I don’t think I’m going to get anything quite so impressive as I did in Eagletop,” Lucian says. “I’ll be careful, I promise. You’ll be with me.”

It’s a long morning following deer trails through the forest. They encounter two small does and pass them by, and Eadwin is trying to persuade Lucian to turn back when they chance across a two point stag. He goes down without much trouble, and Lucian makes no effort to hide how pleased with himself he is. Only when the stag is across the back of his horse do they start toward village.

Eadwin seems uncertain at first, scanning the muddy paths that pass for streets. He points out the burial ground, where indeed the new church is standing. It isn’t large, but on the old mound it stands on it’s quite prominent. He says the place has grown since he left, and it takes him a moment to orient before they start toward the place where his home was.

They draw more than a few eyes. The gazes are wary, suspicious of strangers.

Eadwin stops and gets out of the saddle when he sees the place, so Lucian follows suit. They walk the horses up to the small old house. There’s a fenced in yard, where a handful of scrawny chickens are scratching at the dirt, and a small garden. An tall older woman with long thin arms sits in the yard in a chair, shelling peas into a bowl in her lap, and she looks up as Eadwin stops in front of the gate. Her hands stop.

“I can take the horse,” Lucian says, soft.

Eadwin hands him the reins and opens the gate. “Hello, Mother.” The woman turns in her chair to shout toward the house. “Fortune! Fortune, come out here!”

The woman who appears in the door could be Eadwin’s twin, if Lucian didn’t know better. She looks at her brother for a long moment, and then comes storming down to the gate. She slaps Eadwin across the face and Lucian thinks: even I didn’t hit him that hard. “How many years?” Fortune demands. “How many damned years, Eadwin?”

Eadwin draws in a breath and lets it out. “Thirty-five.”

“Thirty-five years,” Fortune repeats, “and the next I hear you’re disgraced, maybe dead, all because of—” Her eyes slide off Eadwin’s shoulder to Lucian and it looks for a moment as if she’s stuck a lemon between her teeth. “Is that her?”

“He—” Eadwin begins, and then hesitates, looking back at Lucian. Lucian meets Fortune’s unyielding gaze. “I was, once. I’m told she’s dead now.”

Fortune doesn’t seem to quite know what to make of that, and her confusion takes the wind out of her anger.

“Could we stay?” Eadwin asks. “We have nowhere else to go.”

Fortune looks at the stag on the back of the horse. “Bring your horses around to the shed. I’ll have my son put something up so you can deal with that deer.”

Lucian meets most of the members of the house while he’s elbow deep in the deer carcass. Fortune’s son, Will, is named for his late father—Fortune’s second husband. He has three sisters, two older and one younger: Bree, Joan, and Sky. Hanne, Prue’s daughter, has a husband and a son of her own. It’s a house packed to bursting with people already, and Lucian isn’t certain how they can squeeze any more in.

At least they’re all enthusiastic about the prospect of fresh venison. It helps to smooth over the fact that they don’t know what to make of him.

Fortune never stops moving, there’s always something she thinks needs doing and often it means she does not have to be out with the rest of them. Eadwin is telling his mother yes, we plan to stay. He doesn’t know what to say Lucian is to him, when she asks.

“We were married in my home church,” Lucian says, cutting away the last attachments of the hide. “What that makes me we haven’t quite figured out yet.” He looks at Will. “Do you have a scraper for the hide?”

“No,” Will says, even more perplexed by Lucian, “but I can run it over to the Tanners. They’ll buy it fresh.”

“Best hurry then,” Lucian says, folding the hide. “In this heat it’ll rot before you can blink.”

They don’t have the means to store the meat, so Fortune sends out the girls and Hanne’s husband to tell their neighbors to come and eat. Any discussion of Lucian and Eadwin will be put off until afterward. Eadwin helps to cut the carcass into pieces that will roast over a small fire, or fit in Fortune’s soup pot. He does know his way around with a butcher’s knife, but it’s also clear that he’s out of practice. There’s time for that to change, Lucian supposes.

“How are you?” Eadwin asks, quiet.

Lucian sluices blood off his arms with a bucket of water from the well. “Feels like I ought to be asking you that.”

Bits of fat and flesh that are too small to make use of are tossed to the chickens, who snatch them up greedily.

Fortune and Abigayle set to making flatbread, which they pat out and fry in melted deer fat at a remarkable speed. The bustling activity stirs a memory in Lucian, Felix talking about the end of the war, while the kings were busy making treaties and their camps were uneasy, bristling with tension from having recently been fighting each other. It wasn’t until they ate together that they felt they could all go home with respect for their kings’ new treaty, until the next time they went to war. “It’s harder to have an enemy on a belly full of hot food,” Felix said.

Too many people come to that house for Lucian to have any hope of remembering their names. Some bring their own bread, vegetables, sweets. Fortune puts out beer. There is eating and talking and a great many people seem to recognize Eadwin and are pleased to see him back, though when they ask how that came about all he says is that he left the abbey. When they ask who Lucian is, and Eadwin hesitates, Lucian supplies—“The reason he left.” It makes his new neighbors laugh. They can make their own assumptions about what that means.

The stag is stripped down to the bones, which are cracked for their marrow. One man takes a few for his dogs, the rest will go in the river “for the mermaids to chew on.” Every last speck of that stag disappears down someone’s throat, and the horses are marveled at, and Lucian hears someone congratulating Fortune on having a hunter in the house, now. The visitors linger a long time, and Lucian feels so tired. He had imagined that their arrival would let them rest.

Fortune doesn’t speak to him until after dark, when the last of their visitors have gone home and they are clearing everything and a space is being made for Eadwin and Lucian to sleep in. “My brother says it was your idea to bring the stag. Says you killed it.”

Lucian nods. “I didn’t want to come here as a beggar.”

Fortune considers him, making an expression as though there’s something stuck in her teeth that she’s trying to get out. “What’s somebody like you doing coming here with him?”

“I wanted it more than the alternative.”

“What, silks and jewels and servants to wait on you hand and foot?” Fortune asks, incredulous.

“Dying in the birthing bed with a child by a man who hated me, or taking my own life, whichever came first.” Lucian smiles thinly, his patience frayed by weariness. “Never mind that I could have gotten Eadwin killed, too.” Sometimes, when he closes his eyes at night, he sees that murderous look in Wulfric’s eyes again. If Margaret had killed Wulfric, he wonders, would he be locked away for it? Perhaps it would have been less sympathetic, if he killed Wulfric himself after the affair was discovered.

Fortune sighs through her nose, scrubbing the pan she has in the washbasin. “He also says you’re going to have a baby.”

“If everything goes well.” It doesn’t seem to have come unstuck after all that riding.

“You mean to keep this up, then?” Fortune asks. “This walking around as a man.”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” Fortune picks up the pan to dry it and hang it back on the wall. “We could use a hunter in the family. Your belly gets much bigger, though, that’ll be trouble.”

“If we build a smokehouse, we can keep the meat longer.” Smoke is cheaper than salt, and Lucian has never had much taste for pickled meats.

“You know how to do that?”

“I know what they look like.”

“Mm. I asked Walter to bring some feed for your horses, since he and all his sons were here.”

Lucian doesn’t remember who Walter is.

Fortune snaps the rag she was using to dry, tosses it over her shoulder. “Be trouble to keep them over the winter if nobody can use them.”

“Plenty of time for the others to learn how to ride, then.”

Fortune pauses, looking at him with raised brows.

“If someone needs help from a midwife or otherwise, then it would be good if more of the house were able to ride out and get it.” Lucian shrugs his shoulders. “Would justify keeping the both of them. A good horse is too useful to waste.” And either of those horses would be wasted at the plow, which surely has to have crossed Fortune’s mind.

“I suppose it would,” she mutters. She looks at Lucian with that frown again. “I can’t figure you out.”

“How so?”

“I don’t understand why you’d come here instead of staying in some convent.”

“The sisters wouldn’t have been agreeable to me dressing like this and keeping Eadwin in my bed,” Lucian replies.

“Hm,” Fortune says. “At some more decent hour you’ll have to tell me how it is you died.”

She shows him to the narrow room that, for now at least, is the space where he and Eadwin will sleep. Hardly big enough for the makeshift bed, let alone the scant few possessions they brought. It’s near the kitchen, though, so it’s a touch warmer for its proximity to the hearth. Eadwin comes in just after, looking as tired as Lucian feels. They curl up together under the heavy wool blanket, and Lucian tucks his head under Eadwin’s chin. “How are you?”

“Tired.” He strokes a hand down Lucian’s back. “You?”

“Tired.”

#.

Eadwin

The following morning, while Lucian is out tending to the horses, Fortune sits down with him at the kitchen table. “You could have come when Prue died.”

“I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was told I was needed where I was.” Because Wulfwyn had not yet come into the world, and Wulfric was hopeful he would have a legitimate son. He wanted someone on hand to bless the child right away. Wulfric had sulked for days when she came out a daughter. Lady Anna had pleaded with him to say something that would soothe Wulfric’s mood, to reassure him that they would still have a son.

“Were you?”

“Not as much as they would have had me believe.” He sighs, scrubs his face with a hand.

“Would you ever have come back, if it weren’t for him?”

“I don’t know, Fortune.” He doesn’t know what other paths might have opened before him. He knows that he hadn’t had any plans to part with Eagletop until it became a necessity.

His sister rubs at her wrists, which pain her. “I’ll show you where Prue’s buried.” Her eyes settle on his face. “Do you think he’ll stay, when he realizes how hard it can be?”

“I don’t know,” Eadwin says. Then, “I don’t know that he has any other choice.” Lady Margaret is dead, they say of a broken heart. “I do know it was hard getting here, and he never once complained, except about the heat. And I know that when he had every reason to back down from Wulfric, he wouldn’t stop fighting.”

“Is it true he killed the lord?”

Eadwin shakes his head. “No. He seemed to be trying not to.” They haven’t spoken about that day, about why Lucian went for the shoulder, and not the gut. Maybe, for all that he hated Wulfric and had every reason to, he just didn’t have it in him to kill a person. Maybe he hadn’t been pushed far enough.

“You love him?” Fortune asks.

“So much it steals my wits.”

“You never had much of those to begin with,” Fortune says, standing up. Even when she was a child she could never bear to sit still for long. “At least he’s sensible enough to show up here with good meat.”

Eadwin smiles faintly.

“What?” Fortune asks.

“Only that I had a feeling you’d like him better than me.”

#.

Lucian wants to go up to the church to light a candle in thanks for their safe journey. The church is populated with sisters from a handful of different orders, who apparently made some kind of cooperative agreement to build a church here. The priestess they chose is from the Order of the Fields, dressed in pale green habit. Mother Agnes is near sixty, and of a warm disposition.

The plaster statue is small, but nearly everything in this church is small. It’s still a great deal more than they had. The Queen of Heaven is shown as a young woman, one hand stretching up to guide the sun through the heavens, the other reaching down to pull life up from the land, the broken body of Her husband. Her hair streams out behind Her, dark as rich earth. The Maker of the World, in Her act of creation.

The candles are tallow. They each light one, and stand a moment at the altar to pray. Eadwin gives thanks to the Queen and to St. Luce for showing him the way. He begs the angels to keep his family safe. Whatever Lucian prays for, he keeps to himself.

They go out through the burial ground afterward. Eadwin finds his feet can take him to Charlie Rees’ grave without much trouble, the wooden post bearing his name beginning to show its age. After that, he finds Prue’s. How many people, he wonders, are rotting away in the sides of these mounds while the old kings these hills were dug for have long since turned to dust. From the corpse of the Slain Lord and back into it, until your flesh is returned to the grass that feeds the sheep whose wool will clothe and whose flesh will feed your grandchildren’s children. You were made from death, one of the old poets said, and you will walk hand in hand with it until you become part of it once more.

“You look deep in thought,” Lucian murmurs, sliding a hand across Eadwin’s back.

“Now that I’m not trying to get somewhere else,” he says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself if I’m not getting up every morning for prayers and teaching someone else’s children how to read and say their prayers.”

Lucian laughs softly. “You’ve gotten up early every morning to pray since we left Grenacre. Even I don’t pray that much.”

“Old habits.”

“You’ll have a new child to teach soon enough,” Lucian says. “In the meantime, I suspect Fortune could make and sell her beer for better prices if there were someone to keep books for her.”

He could do that, he supposes. And he can help to build a smokehouse.

#.

Summer eases onward. Lucian goes out nearly every day and fills the table with duck and rabbit. By the time the first chill seeps into the morning air, everyone in the house has rabbit fur to line their shoes.

Eadwin starts a ledger for the brewing, finds his calm in the ordering of numbers. He argues for better prices on the barley and hops, and he argues with Fortune until she agrees to raise the price for the beer. She does not like to be told what to do, particularly not by him. She becomes more amenable after he argues with Lord Andrew’s tax collector, who he is sure has been robbing the house for years. They begin, by starts and stops, to do a little better.

In the tiny room he shares with Lucian, he puts in a shelf for their books, under the black stag hide. They are the only people in the house with any books. One night as Lucian sits by the window and watches the fading light, he says to Eadwin, “For a while I wondered if they weren’t right that Margaret was dead. I didn’t feel like her at all. But I think she’s still there, just—tired, from all that time she had no choice but to carry everything.” He looks at Eadwin and says, “I want you to call me Margaret, tonight.”

He is the only one who calls her Margaret, now. Only when they’re alone, only when she asks for it.

The rest of the time, Lucian is what he is. His middle swells, and those that didn’t guess what he was when they met him are flummoxed by it, but since no one knows how to ask, they don’t ask at all. Though Eadwin doesn’t half wonder how much of that is that they’re afraid of crossing Fortune, who belligerently corrects anyone who calls Lucian she. He heard her ask the barleyman if he’d left his wits out in the field, that he couldn’t see what was before his own eyes.

Fortune says it’s because they haven’t forgotten how much Eadwin used to fight. Former monk or no, they still see him at sixteen with bloodied and bruised knuckles.

They teach the others how to ride and handle the horses. Hanne and Joan take to it the most naturally, Fortune refuses to go near the beasts. Their mother watches from the garden, shelling her peas and beans and clucking her tongue when Will falls out of the saddle again.

He finds that his mother is gentler, without his father. She smiles more, and she seems especially fond of Lucian, who brings her flowers from the meadows and mushrooms from the forest. They eat well. Fortune sews Lucian a winter cloak.

With autumn come the frosts, and after a fierce argument in which it becomes apparent that he cannot stop Lucian, only ride with him, Eadwin follows Lucian out into the woods to take another deer to put away for the winter.

They come back with two old does and fill up their smokehouse. “Now I won’t need to hunt until well after the child is born,” Lucian says, in an annoyed I already told you this voice.

That night Eadwin draws him near and says, “You don’t know how terrified I am that something will happen to you and I’d never know.”

Lucian strokes his cheek. “Fool. I know exactly how terrified you are.”

He is still glad to wake every morning and find Lucian there beside him. Less glad, perhaps, when Fortune looks at him one morning and says, “After about midnight, I start wishing you two liked each other less.”

The rains start. The Penbreak begins to run fuller, closer to the tops of its banks. Lucian grows restless because he can’t go out in the woods. He spends more time taking care of the horses and going up to the church, talking to the Rose midwife there. They can feel the child when it moves, now. It seems stubbornly committed to life, in spite of everything.

They trade some of their venison for salt pork and mutton. Lucian lets out the sides of his shirts. They eat well.

Eadwin starts to know his nieces and nephew. Will is amiable and tries to keep everyone happy. Hanne is like Prue was, shy and thoughtful, prone to moodiness. Bree takes after Fortune so much it’s hard to believe she had a father at all, though she has a better sense of humor than her mother. She works just as hard. Joan has a restless and flighty personality, Fortune fears that she’ll take off with the first man to ask for her hand. Sky wants to learn to read, so she can be educated. He teaches her in the evenings, after the day’s work is done.

Hanne’s husband, Tom, is the loudest person in the house. It would be bothersome, but he and Lucian take to each other immediately for reasons Eadwin can’t entirely fathom. They act as though they’ve known each other their whole lives.

It isn’t the quiet life he had at the abbey, even with consideration for his involvement in Wulfric’s house. This house is noisy, bursting at the seams, and it is… home. Still, his hope is that they can do well enough for themselves to build a bigger house.

At night Lucian ruminates about Grenacre, about his brothers, about Felix. He talks about Felix teaching him to ride, to shoot.

He starts to complain of his back, and it being more difficult to sleep. Eadwin sits up with him one night in the kitchen, while Lucian writes to Felix and waits for the baby to settle. He sends the letter out quietly the next day on a river barge, on a route that will take it through a dozen hands and mean it doesn’t arrive until spring. Lucian doesn’t want Felix to be able to track him down on a whim.

With winter comes the snow, and ice forming along the slower spots in the river. Lucian hardly leaves the house except for mass, because his feet ache. “Heaven help me if I ever let you put me in this position again,” he grumbles. Fortune insists they take her room, which has a proper bed.

Midwinter is celebrated in much the same way it was when he was a boy, only now there’s a church to provide its center. Mother Agnes performs a midwinter mass, and everyone has brought what food and drink they can spare, to be shared around a bonfire in the burial ground, with the moon shining full and fat in the gaps between the clouds. There’s music and singing and dancing, and Lucian is smiling like it’s all the best thing he’s ever seen. When they go home, Eadwin curls around Lucian’s back and holds him close.

The snow deepens, the river begins to freeze over. The moon wanes and waxes again. They eat well.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon XI.

To Be Made One

6.4k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Eadwin

It feels strangely like a pilgrimage. What else to call it, riding toward this place upon which his life hinges, with little else to do but reflect and pray?

It is well and truly summer now, and the days are hot and clear with insects singing in the fields. When he passes the standing stone that marks the north edge of Grenacre there is a hawk perched upon it, watching the reapers in the hay fields. Waiting to see what field mice might be flushed out by the swinging scythes.

When someone asks where he is traveling to, he says he is going to the Holy Well of Birchglen, which was said to have been blessed by the falling of an angel’s feather and is only a day’s ride past Grenacre, to meet his wife who went there with her family.

He hasn’t the money to stay in the inn he chose when he first set north with Margaret, but to be in the town again is strange enough. Were it not so late in the day, he would ride straight for the abbey—but he wants all the hours of daylight available to him to persuade the abbess to let him see Margaret. He wishes there were some way he could send her a sign, to let her know that he’s near.

He takes his papers, orders them as best he can, and goes to find a bookbinder.

When at the tavern he asks a few tentative questions about the Becketts he hears plenty of rumor and gossip. The townspeople seem to find more than a little joy in the late Lord Henry’s reclusive daughter escaping her father only to immediately fall into infamy. To his surprise, Eadwin learns that the monk responsible is twenty years younger than himself, and apparently quite handsome. The woman telling him this knows, she saw him herself. Nothing good comes of handsome monks, anymore than comes of pretty nuns, their neighbor sagely chimes in. And did he he hear? They say Lady Margaret killed her betrothed bridegroom herself and went mad.

Another night in which sleep does not come easily, and his candle grows far too short while he writes. It seems that he will always be losing sleep over Margaret.

Dawn finds him having fallen down into bed still dressed. He calls for water for a bath and shaves his face in the pitiful excuse for a mirror. Few of the clothes he now calls his could qualify as his “best,” but he supposes if a black woolen habit was enough for Margaret then clothes that aren’t rumpled from sleep will do just as well. A white shirt, a green coat, dusty brown workmen’s trousers.

He eats at the inn, though he hardly has any appetite, and is in the saddle as the town is beginning to rouse and set to its business. The abbey lays past a field of hops, and the breeze carries the unmistakable citrus scent. He remembers how it used to hang in the air around his mother, when they had the good fortune to get hops.

As he draws near to the abbey, the nuns are going out to work in their orchard after their morning songs and breakfast. Few give him any notice as he rides up—visitors are frequent and he will have to stable the horses himself. He makes sure they will need nothing until the next morning at the latest, and takes a moment to steel himself.

A sister who uses a wheeled chair is the one waiting at the doors to receive guests. She’s perhaps of middle age, and she has a basket of mending that she’s tending to while she waits. “Good morning,” she says, cheerful. “May our Heavenly Mother smile on you. Are you here for the chapel?”

Eadwin draws in a breath. “I’ve come to see Lady Margaret.”

The sister hesitates, her smile faltering. “May I have your name?

She tells him to wait, and he does, watching the grounds and the windows for any sign of Margaret. After a time the door opens again, and the abbess—marked only by her flower embroidered stole—steps out. She might be nearly eighty, and she takes him in with sharp eyes, like a grackle’s. “I am surprised you were bold enough to come here openly.”

“I don’t see what I could gain by deception, Mother.”

“What are you hoping to achieve here?”

“I made my lady a promise,” he says. “Several promises. But mostly, I want to see that she’s well.”

“Hm.” The abbess considers him. “You understand that she was placed in my care so that I would protect her from further disgrace?”

“I understand that she was placed in your care to protect Lord Henry from further embarrassment.”

Her expression twitches in what is either a suppressed grimace or a smile. “Well,” she says, “his lordship did not forbid visitors. Since you’ve come without deception, I suppose I shall have to trust you will not try to run off with her in secret. Come inside.”

He followed the abbess into the abbey. She takes him to an inner garden, which of course is thick with roses. Dozens of different varieties in all manner of colors, they climb over wire frames and up stone walls, blooming with wild abandon, the ground thick with fallen petals.

He sees the flash of light on Margaret’s hair, first. Shorn, it fluffs around her head like a halo. Margaret is looking down at a book, a finger tracing the line to keep her place. Around her neck, he can see the chain of his moonstone amulet. The abbess tells him to wait several paces back, and she goes up to Margaret alone.

“Lady Margaret, you have a visitor.”

Margaret doesn’t look up from her book. “If it’s Harry, tell him to go away.”

“It is not any of your family, my lady.”

After a moment, Margaret lifts her head to look at the abbess. Then those gray eyes slide over the abbess’s shoulder and Margaret stands, the book slipping from her hands to fall to the ground, pages splayed open on the crushed rose petals.

For a moment they just stare at each other, neither of them able to move or speak.

Margaret lifts her hand to her mouth, something between a gasp and a sob escaping between her fingers. It seems as though she can’t quite weep, breath coming in starts and stops as Eadwin comes up to her. He can see his ring strung on the chain, resting on her breast. He lifts a hand to brush his fingers over her hair. “It suits you,” he says.

Margaret gasps and breaks, wrapping her arms around his neck as she sobs. Eadwin folds his arms around her, holding her close and pressing his face into her hair. She still wears that sandalwood perfume.

The abbess picks up the book and retreats to the edge of the garden, though she does not step out of view.

“I was so afraid something would happen to you and I would never know,” Margaret says, clinging to him. “Mother in Heaven, I’m so happy to see you.”

“I’m happy that you’re well,” Eadwin whispers.

Margaret squeezes his shoulders and pulls him down to kiss her. Eadwin wishes he were less acutely aware of the abbess.

“I’ll not lose you again,” Margaret says. She grasps his hand and pulls him across to the abbess. “Mother Robina, marry us.”

The abbess blinks in surprise. “Lady Margaret—”

“Mother, I will not be letting him out of my sight again, so you may marry us or I will leave with him now to find someone who will.” Margaret’s fingers are iron-tight in his. “I have prayed too hard and for too long to risk that my lord brother will hide me away somewhere more secretive so that my child can be born a bastard even when their father wants them.”

From the look Mother Robina gives, she’s become well acquainted with Margaret’s force of will. “There are things I must do, first. I trust you can stay put—and recall that these are church grounds—until I return?”

“Yes, Mother,” Margaret says with a nod. “We shall not move from this garden.”

Mother Robina looks expectantly at Eadwin, so he nods and affirms the same.

As the abbess leaves, Margaret draws him back to the bench where she was sitting. “You must tell me everything,” she says. “What happened in Eagletop after I left?” Her smile is almost the same one she wore when her father first agreed to send her to Wulfric, a flood of relief shining out through her face. Now, she won’t let go of his hands. She’s almost stitched to him at the side, and Eadwin feels half in a dream.

It’s difficult to speak of Eagletop, but Margaret smiles to hear that Aethelric has named Wulfwyn as his heir and that he’s training her as he would a son. He tells her that Everard was playing more freely, that Mildred was frightened but being looked after. He sighs and says, “Wulfwyn asked if there was anything that would make you come back. She offered up her uncle as a groom, which I’m sure Aethelric would have been thrilled by.”

Margaret laughs softly, but her smile is saddened. “Did she, now?”

“I advised her against it,” Eadwin says, “and then she asked if you would come back for me.” He squeezes Margaret’s hand. “She wanted you to know that she’s sorry.”

“I ought to be the one telling her sorry,” Margaret murmurs.

“She’ll be alright, I think,” Eadwin says. “She wants to hunt like you, and I have no doubt that Aethelric will be happy to oblige her. He’ll be smug if he can tell any prospective suitors they can only pursue his niece if they can best her in a hunt or an archery contest.”

Margaret laughs again and curls against Eadwin’s side, her head on his shoulder. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Eadwin kisses the top of her head. “Even when you’re half a kingdom away you won’t let me sleep.” He lifts an arm to wrap around her shoulders. “Is there some other name you would have me call you?”

She’s quiet for a moment, and she says, “When I was speaking with the Heavenly Mother, when she showed me what I am—it was as though there were two of us. The same and yet… distinct.” She looks up at him. “I haven’t come up with a name for that other part of me, yet. But these days, I’m him more often than I’m Margaret.”

“And now?”

“Right now, I’m Margaret.” She lifts his hand to kiss his fingers. “I’ve missed you,” she says again. “I’ve missed talking to you, the sound of your voice. I thought I would die, if you weren’t with me when—” She presses a hand to her middle, lets out a breath. “I won’t let you go again.”

Eadwin bends to kiss her. “I ought to be the one saying I won’t let you go.”

Margaret smiles, and lays a hand on his cheek to press another kiss to his mouth. “I love you,” she whispers. “I won’t let anyone come between us again.”

A cool breeze stirs the warm summer air, stirs the roses and Margaret’s hair, and Eadwin thinks if he could preserve this moment, trap it in amber, there could never be a gem more precious to him.

She tells him all that happened to her while they were apart, and after some time Mother Robina returns, dressed now in her scarlet ritual habit, her veil longer and edged in white lace. “Fetch your gifts, if you have them, and come to the chapel,” she says. “We have made it ready.”

Margaret is reluctant to let him out of her sight for even that long, but Eadwin goes back to the stable to find the book he had bound. He had winced at the cost to have it done quickly, but he thinks they should still be able to get where they’re going without much trouble. The cover is done in handsome red leather, and embossed with a rose and an arrow. For all the sleepless nights it contains, it is nonetheless a slim volume.

Margaret is visibly relieved when he steps into the chapel. As with so many Rose churches its columns are made to resemble trees, sweeping up to the textured canopy of the ceiling, painted with animals and vining flowers and ivy. The stained glass casts the interior in a riot of color, so that the Queen of Heaven shines as if made of jewels. She is wreathed in dried roses and other flowers, red beeswax candles flickering at Her feet.

Eadwin makes the sign of prayer, and joins Margaret before the altar. The witnesses the abbess has gathered are four sisters—one more than required by law, Eadwin thinks, and each young enough their faculties will not be doubted and old enough they could not be said to be naive.

Mother Robina turns toward the altar, raising her hands to the Queen. “Holy Mother,” she calls, “we ask you to bless your children, to watch over us with a loving gaze. Protect us from all harm, and grant your blessings especially to those two have come to be joined today, as you were once joined to the Lord who was slain. In your holy name we pray, so may it be.”

A quiet echo from the sisters: “So may it be.”

Mother Robina turns, pouring a goblet of amber-colored rose hip wine. “When the Lord of Heaven was slain and his body fell to create the earth,” she says, “the first flower that sprouted from the rain of the Queen of Heaven’s tears was a rose. It is thus that we see the rose as a symbol of Her wondrous love, and from its fruits we make our sacramental wine. Take, and drink of the Queen’s love, let it fill your heart to overflowing and ensure the lasting of your love for each other.”

It is a delicate operation to hold the cup for each other as one is meant to do, but they are lucky and nothing is spilled. (He remembers as a boy hearing the tittering for weeks after a young bride spilled nearly the entire goblet down the front of her groom, how it was sure to be an omen of an unhappy marriage. Of course, they had no church, and no one could afford any wine, so it was beer being spilled in the old ash grove where they said the heathens had used to do their rites.)

“You may now exchange your gifts.” Mother Robina nods to Eadwin to go first.

Margaret sucks in a breath when he unwraps the paper around the book. She takes it with careful hands, opening the cover to see what it is.

“I wrote for you every night,” he murmurs. The first poem he wrote for her is the first in the book.

Margaret brings a hand to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. She clasps the book to her breast a moment, and then hands it to the sister who stands close at hand for this purpose. Raising her own gift, Margaret brushes the tears away from her eyes.

It is his prayer book, with a newly made fabric cover in a blue so deep it’s nearly black, on which she has embroidered a full moon in silver thread, with slim rays of moonlight radiating out. “I was never very patient with my stitching,” she says, “but I wanted it to be beautiful.”

His chest is tight, he has to try to draw in a breath. The gifts are set aside, and they take each other’s hands. Margaret’s grip is unyielding, she is visibly trying to hold herself together, and Eadwin wonders if it’s so plain on his own face.

“Give your names.”

And this is the moment to which Eadwin has given no thought at all—because the truth is that his family did not have any particular name when he was a boy. He was called and answered to Butcher (for his father), Brewster (for his mother), and Osgarsson. For thirty years he was Eadwin Lunadora, it is the name inscribed in his prayer book, but he has no right to that name any longer. The bothersome part is that he isn’t only choosing for himself which name to wear—he’s choosing which one to give to Margaret, at least until she has another.

He hesitates for too long. Margaret squeezes his hands, looking at him with a shade of worry.

“Eadwin Brewster,” he says at last. If his mother or his sister is still brewing, that might as well be the name he wears.

Margaret smiles faintly. “Margaret Beckett, blessed Margaret Adela.”

“And do you both, Eadwin Brewster and Margaret Adela Beckett, vow to join your lives as one, to care for each other and for each other’s kin, to be made one family in the eyes of our Mother in Heaven, in whose love you are bound?”

“I do take this vow.”

Mother Robina lets out a breath. “Then in the name of the Queen of Heaven, before the angels and the saints and all the denizens of Paradise, I name you husband and wife. Be blessed, in the love of our Mother.”

Margaret surges forward, throwing her arms around his neck and Eadwin wraps his arms around her, letting out a shuddering breath. He holds her close and there is nothing now that can part them, unless her lord brother makes good on his threat to kill him.

#.

Margaret

She takes her new husband—and how delicious that word is—back to the room she was given and cares not for the fact that it is the middle of the day and anyone who walks past might hear. She hasn’t had him since that day in the store room at Eagletop, and now they are married and she will have him no matter who will hear.

It seems distance has sweetened Eadwin toward her requests for rough handling. He presses her up against the door, hands tugging at the ties of her dress. Margaret runs her hands up his shoulders, kissing him and sighing when his mouth is on her neck. “Would you still build me an altar?”

“With my bare hands,” he says, those hands sliding up the back of her skirt, along her legs. “If it took me a thousand years. I would lose myself in you.”

Margaret pulls his shirt over his head, pleased at how much easier it is to disrobe him now. She traces her fingernails through the dark hair on his chest. “I told you I would have you out of your clothes again.”

He jerks her bodice from her shoulders. “And I will have you out of yours.”

Margaret laughs, pushing him toward the narrow bed. Hers will be the most joyful wedding night that ever was, and the sun still up. Eadwin seems to want every part of her, and Margaret is happy to provide. His hands, his mouth are all over her body. Margaret has to push him over to finally get at his cock. She takes his hands after pressing him inside her, biting her lip with a smile to have him like this again.

She thinks she’s never had so much of a joy as this: that she no longer has to keep it secret. Eadwin’s grip on her hips puts a fire in her, and when she comes undone she clings to his shoulders, tears on her cheeks once more. No one will ever be able to make her let him go again.

They wile away the afternoon in bed, Margaret giving no care to the open window other than to be pleased by the warm breeze on her skin. The longer she’s free of her clothes, the more she begins to slip into his skin, the unnamed man he spends more time as. He tucks against Eadwin’s side as Eadwin reads one of the poems he wrote while they were apart, this one making a reference to St. Luce’s lantern.

His mind catches on that, on St. Luce and the vision he had in the moon mass. He shifts, bringing a hand to Eadwin’s arm. “What if I called myself Lucian?” Light, he thinks, and recalls Eadwin saying he would always put the sun to shame. Light like a lantern leading him to himself.

Eadwin shifts, their temples falling together. “Do you like it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Eadwin sets the book aside and draws him-that-was-Margaret into his arms, kissing him softly. “Lucian,” he murmurs, and again, kissing his neck, and his collar, as if each part of him needs to be named anew. Lucian smiles, unfolding like a rose in bloom, letting the sunlight and the summer air wash over him as Eadwin draws hands down his sides. He likes the way their names sound together, Eadwin and Lucian. Yes, he thinks, this is the name.

They’re slower this time, at least at first, and afterward Eadwin lays with his head on Lucian’s breast, tracing his palm over the impossibly faint swell in Lucian’s middle.

“I’m surprised you can even tell the difference,” Lucian says, fussing idly at Eadwin’s hair.

“I don’t know that I would, if it weren’t for the weeks apart.” His fingertips trace a circle, and Eadwin lifts his head to look at Lucian. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you this happy.”

Lucian smiles, brushing fingers over Eadwin’s cheek. “With any luck, you’ll see it every day now.”

As the sun begins to set, there’s a sharp rap on Lucian’s door. “Lady Margaret,” a deeply annoyed voice says—Sister Beatrix, he thinks, who is as dour a sister of the Rose as ever lived. She probably volunteered for this just so she could put a stop to things. “Dinner in half an hour.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Lucian calls, sitting up. He brushes out his hair, and Eadwin has to help him back into his dress. “Once I leave this place I might never put on another dress again,” he mutters.

#.

Lucian thinks it is a much more pleasant experience to lose sleep because he doesn’t want to close his eyes and stop looking at Eadwin. The candle is burning down and they haven’t stopped talking or touching each other. The best thing is knowing that one of them won’t have to sneak away before morning light, that if they ever manage to get to sleep they will be able to wake up beside each other.

Lucian falls asleep against Eadwin’s chest and wakes up in his arms. It’s late, from the angle of the sunlight on the wall. No one came to wake him for morning song. Likely, the sisters were just relieved that things were finally quiet. Lucian smiles to himself and gently pulls out of Eadwin’s grasp, getting up to stretch and wash.

Lucian is combing his hair into some semblance of order when Eadwin stirs, turning onto his side to watch Lucian. It’s a moment or two before he speaks. “For a moment I was afraid it was all a dream.”

Lucian perches on the side of the bed and leans down to kiss him. “Too good to be a dream,” he murmurs. “I want to leave today.” Before anyone at Grenacre can even know that Eadwin was there. There will be no more goodbyes.

Eadwin nods, pulling himself up. “We should bathe here, while we have the chance.”

“I imagine this won’t be as comfortable as when we rode for Eagletop.”

“No,” he says. “Especially not if we don’t want to be found.”

Breakfast has been left for them, and Lucian begins to pack his things. He’ll have to leave the antlers behind, he decides. He doesn’t see how he can keep the velvet undamaged if everything he owns will be tied to a horse. The black hide will have to be enough.

“Do you think we’ll be able to sell my dresses in town?” It would be easier to not have to pack them, and wasteful to leave them behind. There will be no family money to draw on, once they leave this place.

“I should think so.”

Lucian lays the dresses out all together and wraps them in his lady’s riding cloak. He’ll keep the simplest dress in case he needs it for something, but otherwise he’ll leave this place in the clothes that he has sewn for himself.

He’s preparing to ask for use of the abbey bath when there’s a knock. “Lady Margaret, your brother Felix is here.”

Of all the blasted times for him to make an unexpected visit. Margaret half wonders if someone sent word to him.

She has always received him in her room before, he’ll notice if she steps out into the hall. He’ll be suspicious if she sends him away, might linger and see her leaving with Eadwin. She’ll only postpone the inevitable, and she has never liked lying to Felix.

Even now. “Very well. Let him in.”

Felix stops in the doorway, looking at Eadwin putting on his belt. “Well,” he says, “that didn’t take you very long at all, did it?”

“Talk quickly, Felix, I don’t mean to slow down for anyone,” Margaret says, packing the few books she’s keeping. Eadwin’s wedding gift, her own prayer and song book, the collection of heathen stories Felix brought her from the family library.

Felix is looking at her. “I can’t convince you to stay long enough for your child to be born?”

Margaret scoffs. “I won’t give Harry the time to devise a way to make me a widow. Besides, I’m sure the sisters will tell you how eager they are for me to go now that I’m wed.”

“I’d feel better if I knew you were being taken care of.”

“Felix,” Margaret says impatiently, “I don’t give a damn what makes you feel better.” He stood by and said nothing while Harry dragged her screaming out of Eagletop, and he stood by while Harry locked her in this place to keep her out of the way. Margaret supposes he was very much like a mother in that regard.

She’s packing her sewing kit and linen shifts that can be re-cut into undershirts and other such things when Felix steps up beside her and drops a heavy purse onto her back with a sigh.

“What is this?” she asks, dismissive.

“Your dowry, such as it is,” Felix says. “I won’t risk you starving or sleeping on the street while you’re on your way to wherever you’re going. It’s not quite the jewels and silks and rams Harry promised, but I knew I ought to be prepared.”

Her pride would have her reject his charity, but her good sense keeps her quiet. She takes the purse and stuffs it down her bodice, resuming her packing.

“Is there a hospital where you’re going?” Felix asks. “A Rose midwife?”

“There’s a hospital in a nearby town,” Eadwin says. “We’ll stay there, when the child is close.”

“Write to me,” Felix says to Margaret. “Please.”

She looks at him, and she knows she will regret it later, but she can’t stop herself. “I’ll think about it.”

Felix grimaces, but he doesn’t argue with her.

“If you’ll do me one last kindness,” Margaret says, “you’ll wait until tomorrow to tell Harry what I’ve done.”

“Theadora wants to visit you in four days, after mass. I’ll give you until then.”

Margaret wraps her arms around her brother, squeezing his shoulders. “Someday, Felix, when we are both in Paradise, I will tell our mother that you always kept your promise.”

Felix crushes her shoulders, and lets out a breath. “It’s going to be hard to leave home knowing you won’t be there when I get back.”

“Then save us both the worry and stop going off to war,” Margaret says. She pulls back and pulls Felix down to kiss his forehead. “I have to secure the bath. It’s already late. Say a prayer for me?”

“Yes, I suppose I might as well go to the chapel. Then at least I can say I didn’t see what direction you went in.” Felix smiles sadly and strokes her hair. “I hope it’s all worth it.”

“It already is.” Margaret smiles at him. “I promise you, Felix, I’ve never been so happy.”

Felix draws her in for one last embrace and kisses the top of her head. “I swear, Maggie, if you ever need anything—”

“I know,” Margaret says. “I know. Right now, I need you to let me take a bath. Oh—and Felix?”

“Yes?”

Margaret gestures to the black antlers on the wall. “Put those somewhere Harry has to look at them every day, but can’t reach them.”

Felix smiles, a familiar smile from when they would conspire to annoy Harry in some way, because he took himself so seriously and it was impossible to not want to inconvenience their brother. “I can do that.”

#.

Lucian

He lets Eadwin wash his hair, gentle hands working the chamomile soap down to the scalp, tipping Lucian’s chin up before pouring water over his head. Lucian knows they need to be quick but it’s as though every worry melts out of his flesh under Eadwin’s fingers. There’s some magic in that, he thinks, that the same hands that can wind him so tight can melt him like butter by a fire.

The bath in the abbey isn’t a large room, but as with everything else here it was made beautiful. The floor is mosaicked with frogs and colorful fish and water lilies, and though the white walls have been left relatively unadorned to make them easier to clean they sweep to the ceiling in smooth curves, where the high windows let in the pale gold sunlight.

Lucian turns afterward to run his palms across Eadwin’s shoulders, to work out the knot of tension where his neck joins to his shoulder until it releases. Eadwin lets out a breath, and Lucian slides his arms around him, head falling against Eadwin’s back. It does feel something like a dream, that after so much secrecy and fear and everything else that now they don’t have to hide like they did. Here, in the cool water, with Eadwin’s back warm against his chest, Lucian could happily fall into that dream and never wake up.

Eadwin still has a sense of urgency, however, and they don’t linger long. He dresses in the clothes he made and is pleased with their fit. To some degree, the shirt does disguise his shape, but he’ll still need a cloak. “People will see, won’t they?”

“Our far greater concern is that they will know your face,” Eadwin says. “Once we leave any place you’re likely to be recognized—what they think they see won’t matter.” He looks at Lucian and says, “I’ll need to get you new shoes.”

Someone must have told Mother Robina, because she meets them at the stables with her own gift: food that will travel well, at least for a few days. Bread and hard cheese and dry sausage and some early root vegetables. “I would give you more, if I thought you could carry it. Our Mother would not have anyone go hungry.”

“Thank you, Abbess,” Lucian says, “you’ve already given me so much.”

It isn’t appropriate to embrace her, but Mother Robina clasps Lucian’s hands. “Keep safe,” she says, “I pray you find what it is you’re looking for.”

“You can tell my brother that I gave you no choice.”

“You need not worry yourself about what I will say to his lordship. I serve Heaven before I serve any lord.”

They ride out just past noon, while the better part of the sisters are coming in from the orchards for midday meal and are not out by the road. An anxious knot settles in Lucian’s stomach, but no one on the road pays them any heed.

They go the long and empty way around the town, which Lucian knows well from long afternoons of riding, and Eadwin leaves Lucian and his horse in a copse of trees by the river while he goes into town to sell the dresses. That fearful knot grows worse, and Lucian does his best to keep it at bay by thumbing his prayer beads, pacing restlessly on the bank. He listens for the sound of horses, for the voices of his brothers or their men. He has his bow, the one he requested from Grenacre and has been using for target practice in the abbey orchards, but he’ll need more arrows if he loses any at all.

Eadwin returns soon enough, lighter several dresses and carrying a heavier purse, a pair of men’s shoes, a hat to shield his eyes from the sun, and a riding cloak. The leather of the shoes is soft and good, and the fit nearly perfect. The ties keep them snugged to Lucian’s ankles, and with the cloak he is considerably less conscious of the shape of himself through his shirt. “How do I look?”

“A bit like a bandit,” Eadwin says with a faint smile. “Being that some of your garments are just a little too fine compared to the others.”

“I can live with that,” Lucian says. “How far are we going today?”

“I’d like to get as far as Oxbow,” he says, “they close the gates at sundown, but a bribe and a decent story are usually enough to get one through closed walls.”

“What kind of story?”

“If you’ve got no objection,” Eadwin says, pulling himself into the saddle, “my wife is with child, and needs a place to sleep.”

“Mm,” Lucian says, “and why am I in trousers?”

“We’re traveling alone and unprotected. To disguise yourself from brigands.” Eadwin waits as Lucian gets astride his horse. “It will be hard riding,” he says, “I know you’re accustomed to the saddle, but you must tell me if you need to rest.”

Lucian lets out a breath and nods. He won’t share the thought that he would rather lose the child than risk losing Eadwin. They ride out, and Lucian breathes a little easier to be in motion.

He glances at Eadwin as they ride past the standing stone. “Father Algar wasn’t able to do it quietly, was he?”

“No,” Eadwin says, gazing down the road. “He had to make a show of it for the benefit of the court and Lord Aethelric. If he hadn’t, Aethelric would have been obliged to perform some kind of retaliation, or it would have seemed like a conspiracy to assassinate his brother. Since I was made an example of, Aethelric is able to keep having amiable relations with the abbey.”

“It must have been difficult.”

Eadwin is quiet for a moment. “The most difficult thing was the suspicion. Public performance or no, there was some talk of if I had conspired with Aethelric to get rid of his brother. I suppose I complained of Wulfric just a little too frequently.” He gives a humorless smile. “So, naturally, my transgressions must have been based in a desire for revenge. That’s why I led you astray.”

Lucian scoffs. “Is that what you did?”

“Evidently. Of course, the talk I heard in Grenacre is that it was some other monk, much younger and better looking than myself.”

Lucian laughs, and Eadwin smiles a little more. “I do think the sisters were surprised by you,” Lucian murmurs.

The day is clear and hot, and the frigid waters of the river look more and more inviting by the hour. They stop to water their horses, and every moment they are on or off the road Lucian spends looking over his shoulder, expecting men to come galloping after them. How long, he wonders, before he’ll stop being afraid of that?

Lucian says, “Tell me about your family.”

He learns their names: Abigayle, Eadwin’s mother. His sisters: Fortune, and Prudence who is some years gone. He says Fortune was always headstrong. He expects she’ll still be like that. Prue had a daughter, Hanne, and Fortune has at least three children of her own, two daughters and a son, if they all still live. He doesn’t know if she still has a husband. The cost, he says, of the church becoming your family.

“You haven’t really told me anything about your childhood.”

“I don’t like to speak of it,” Eadwin says. “It was ugly and I was glad to leave it behind.”

“If you can’t speak of it with your wife—or whatever I am now—then who can you?”

Eadwin lets out a breath, and nods. “Not on the road,” he says, “but I will tell you.” He’s quiet for a long moment, and then he says, “There is something I would like to tell you about.”

That is how Lucian learns about Charlie Rees. He listens, afraid to interrupt, until Eadwin falls silent again.

“If you didn’t have a church, where was he buried?”

“In the old heathen burial ground, I’m sure that’s where they built the church. On one of those old mounds that looks like a hill. It’s where everyone was buried, for as long as I could remember.”

“How old were you when you left?”

“Seventeen.”

Lucian lets out a breath. “And when you came to Eagletop you were…?”

“Twenty.”

“What did you do for those three years?”

“Any damn thing I had to do to keep myself fed.” Eadwin shrugs his shoulders. “Whatever work I could find. Whatever I could manage to keep. I was not very good at appeasing people at the time, I have plenty of stories I’ll be able to tell you about that.”

“Eadwin.”

“Yes?”

Lucian gazes at him, heart aching, but not so intensely as it did when they were apart. “Is it going to be too difficult for you to go back there?” They can find their way somewhere else, if they have to. Lucian is sure of it.

Eadwin pauses. Then he says, “No. It’s been a lifetime since I was there. I should like to see my family again.”

Lucian reaches out, traces his hand down Eadwin’s arm. “Our family.”

Eadwin nods, looking at him with a bittersweet expression. “Yes. Ours.”

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon X.

Always Returning

6.1k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Margaret

He sends her the silver ring he wore, the one she remembers brushing across her skin the first night she came to his bed. The outside is inlaid only with a single circle of mother of pearl, and on the inside is an inscription which she has already seen when she lay in bed with him one night before they came to Eagletop. It reads: like the moon, always returning. He said it was a reminder of devotion, to be always returning to the Queen of Heaven.

She understands, and she clutches it in her palm as her brothers put her into the carriage with Theadora and her nephews, sobbing until her face grows numb and her ribs ache. Her freedom, but a sunset away, is slipping through her fingers like smoke. Theadora does not try to console her, does not even speak to her.

By the time they reach the inn where they will sleep, the sun is setting and she cannot speak. Marcus takes her up to a room, and she sits by the window, staring out with burned eyes, the ring still clutched in her aching fingers. She has to use her free hand to uncurl them, and the circle impressed against her palm is deep and obvious. Like the moon, always returning.

She presses a hand to her middle and thinks: however long it takes, I will be free. She pulls the moonstone amulet from her bodice and takes it from her neck to slip the ring upon the chain. She could wear it on her thumb but she does not want to risk that Harry might notice and take it from her.

Without her dagger, she has to dig through her things for something sharp. There is a mirror on the wall of the inn, and it is there she stands with her sewing scissors, cutting away the red-gold locks of hair that were always the cause of so much fuss. What she knows now cannot be made quiet again. She promised Harry once: I will make your life a hell.

The long locks of hair fall around her feet in a pool, and it seems to her it has no luster laying against the dark wood. It is worthless on its own, when it is no longer attached to her face.

Felix is the first to come to see her, when she is only half done with the ugly hacking. She does not look at him, and he stands at the door to watch her for a moment.

“They’ll say you’ve gone mad.”

“Fuck you.”

Felix comes to her side and holds out his hand. “Let me.”

Margaret turns and slaps him, hard enough to leave a red mark. “This is your fault,” she hisses. “You were supposed to keep my secret. Why on the Slain Lord’s rotting corpse did you tell Theadora?”

Felix gazes at her. “I was hoping she would convince you not to go.”

Margaret gives a short laugh and shakes her head in disbelief. “The only reason you saw me at all was that I wanted to say goodbye. Eadwin would have left a week ago, and I see now that we should have.”

“I told him where to find you,” Felix says. “Harry will want you in the convent. I still intend to try and persuade you to stay.”

“By doing what?” Margaret asks. “Making sure I never give birth, or else leave my child with the nuns to raise? This disgrace will not stay in Eagletop. I will die unmarried and imprisoned in Grenacre and for what? My brothers’ peace of mind?” She glares at him, wishes she could cut him to shreds with her gaze. “You’ll separate me from everything I have ever wanted, and for what?”

Felix gazes at her in silence for a moment, and holds out his hand again. “Let me finish your hair.”

Margaret slaps the scissors into his hand and turns. He works more carefully than she was, making even the sides of her head. The more hair she sheds, the more the sides begin to lift. Washed, she imagines she’ll be as fluffed as a duckling.

“How short do you want it?”

“There is fine.” A bit longer than her ears, room to grow and soften a bit.

“If you mean to make a man of yourself, you’re going to have to learn to throw a fist,” Felix says quietly.

Of course. Of course he knows. Margaret closes her eyes. “Help me get out of here.”

“I can’t do that, Maggie.”

“You could.”

“There would be a hunt for the both of you, especially after what happened today,” Felix says. “You’re going to need to be around for the court to send someone to question you. And if you’re at the convent in Grenacre—well. Mother Robina has the authority to perform a marriage, if that’s what you properly want. I admit I’m not sure I see how all these things you want fit together.”

“Do you think I could persuade her, after my own brother put me there as a caged bird?”

“I think there’s not a Rose priest or priestess who doesn’t have romantic notions at heart,” Felix says. “You know they say there’s an abbey in the mountains who claims one of their sisters was abducted by Martin the Terrible’s Deathless Guard?” King Martin is over a hundred years dead and the Deathless Guard a tale fathers use to scare their children. A hundred men who could not be killed, who slaughtered the enemies of the king until he shorted them on some bargain and they murdered Martin and his household, decimating his family line, and disappearing as though they never were at all. There are always stories, of course, about where the Deathless Guard are now.

Felix goes on, “The story goes they returned her after not quite a year, she broke some curse upon them that was the reason for their immortality and they scattered like dust to the wind—all except the abbey’s new horsemaster, who they say is quite a bit too close to the sister they took, and all with her abbess’s blessing. So, your own lover not being quite so disreputable, yes I expect you’ll be able to convince her.” He lets out a breath. “Besides that, she’d likely rather risk Harry’s anger than deny a child a somewhat more respectable birth.”

Margaret presses her hand to her middle, to the still invisible possibility. She can feel the bruise in her side where Wulfric kicked her. “He loves me, Felix.”

“I’m sure he does. So do I.”

“If I see Harry I will rip his face off with my fingernails.”

“I don’t imagine he’s of much mind to see you right now, either.” Felix is finished with her hair, he brushes fallen strands from her shoulders, but it clings to her dress in dull threads. “Should I have them send up water for a bath?”

There is blood crusted to her hair, the side of her face. She does not look like a man, yet, but she feels a little stronger. “To wash my face, at least.”

“You will come to Grenacre?” Felix asks. “You won’t try to escape on the road?”

“I will go,” Margaret says. “For his sake, and not for yours. I will wait, patiently, like a hunter in the trees.” She smiles wolfishly at Felix. “And you will see how sweetly I sing the stag to my arrow.”

Felix gazes at her for a long moment, his face impassive the way it is when he plays cards. “You have changed, haven’t you?”

“I have seen the face of our Mother,” Margaret says, “and she has shown me what I am, in truth. I will not be cowed out of it by mortal men.” This, she thinks, is the reason they say a moon mass may drive someone mad, why they say it has turned people into prophets and lunatics. The line between the two is perilously thin.

Felix lets out a breath, and he nods. “I’ll make sure you get something to eat. And some hot water for washing.”

Margaret will not let in any maids to help her with her clothes. She wriggles out of her dress on her own, and in her shift she eats, and sits in the growing dark without lighting any candle. She twists Eadwin’s ring about her finger, watching the western horizon where the slivered moon is already descending. Soon it will not light the night at all, and only the stars will offer their cold comfort in clear skies.

Like the moon, always returning. There was a rhyme she knew as a child, about the moon journeying to and from the dark. “Ho-hey,” she mutters, “the moon has gone away. What will he bring me, what will he bring me?”

She does not sleep.

#.

They wait two days in the town, long enough for the court officials to gather and send someone to question all of them, except the boys. Margaret has not ventured out of her rooms, and does not do so for them. They look uneasily at her cut hair, and the resentful dark hollows of her eyes. “My lady, can you tell us what happened?”

They have already questioned Theadora. Margaret knows because she heard her sister-in-law grow indignant and shout, “An indiscretion is no good reason for beating a woman to death!”

Margaret does not think Wulfric would have killed her, not then, but it is a useful lie. She thinks he would have dedicated himself to increasing her misery for as long as possible, and she knows he would have killed Eadwin, but these men could never understand which of them Aethelric was defending, or why.

They want to know about her affair, and Margaret will not speak of Eadwin, not with them. She says, “That it happened, and that it was why Wulfric tried to kill me is all you need to know. I will speak on nothing else.”

“Do you believe Lord Wulfric would have killed you?”

“Yes.” Eventually. Perhaps not with his fists, but he would have been the reason for her death.

“And Aethelric Seward, you believe he was defending you?”

“What else would I call it?”

“You had no indiscretion with him?”

“No. We were friendly sometimes, as two who were about to be siblings ought to be. He had no interest in me that I could see, nor I any in him.” This is tiresome, and she wants these men to go away.

“Was there any long-standing resentment between the brothers?”

“Do you have brothers?” Margaret asks, cold. “If petty grudges between them were the cause, I see no reason why Aethelric would have waited until there were so many witnesses to kill his own brother in a way that could not be denied. He acted as he did because the moment demanded it.”

She is asked to sign her name to a document recording her testimony. She reads it carefully, to make sure no words have been put in her mouth, or taken out of it. The men leave, and she sits by the window and watches the street. There are brothers of the Moon here, of course, but none of them are Eadwin. She thinks he must surely have been cast out of the order by now. Father Algar had intended to do it quietly but she’s sure the circumstances have demanded it be a more public affair.

She thinks Father Algar must be relieved that Wulfric is dead. She wonders about the children.

About Bramble.

Harry is ready to leave. Margaret will not speak to anyone but Felix, and only sometimes.

#.

Eadwin

It is ugly, as Aethelric predicted. Half the household is terrified, the other relieved.

He himself is sent away from the abbey, and for a time he stays in the castle on Aethelric’s hospitality. “Besides that,” Aethelric says, “I need to know where you’ll be when they come asking questions.”

Eadwin grows accustomed to his new clothes while the lawyers are asking him what happened. It is from their mutterings he learns they have already seen the Becketts, that they think Lady Margaret must have also gone mad, she’s shorn off her hair. They mutter, as Felix told him, that Lord Henry plans to put her in a convent. They mutter that she was cold, and held no distress for the killing of her would-be husband.

Cold, he thinks, is good. Cold means she wasn’t frightened.

Aethelric has Bramble sent to another household, Eadwin doesn’t know where and he doesn’t care to ask. Aethelric mentions offhandedly that she took the time to resolve the trouble Wulfric put her in, so at least he knows where all of his brother’s bastards are. The boy Elred is still at the abbey, what he knows or thinks of his father’s death Eadwin doesn’t know. The girls and their mothers, who were never of any particular interest to Wulfric, are mourning the loss of what small advantage he might have given them, though Aethelric says he doesn’t mean to abandon them.

Sir Laure and Sir Eva, assessing that there was nothing more they could do for Margaret and no more reason for them to remain in Eagletop, had ridden out to return to their proper post a few days after Wulfric’s death. As they hadn’t been there, no testimony was required of them. Sir Laure had come to speak to Eadwin only briefly, to hear from him what had happened. Her mouth twisted into a frown when she heard of how Lord Henry had carried Margaret off.

“Maybe I oughtn’t say it,” she said, “as a woman of the church, but it would have been better if she had gone with you.”

But there is, ultimately, nothing they can do. Lord Henry is his sister’s guardian until she marries or takes the veil.

In the mornings he prays at the castle shrine as she did, and the servants give him a wide berth, as though they suspect him of witchcraft as well.

He sees nothing of the children until a week after Wulfric’s death, after the rites have been performed and he has been buried alongside his father and the brothers and sisters who did not survive to adulthood. Eadwin is not asked to come, and Aethelric complains that he wishes he did not have to go. It would be worse, though, if he did not attend.

Aethelric is away presenting himself at trial, and Eadwin is in the garden when Wulfwyn finds him. She’s alone, which is rare for her. She’s a few months shy of her thirteenth birthday now, and starting to resemble her mother more closely in her face. “Uncle Aethelric says he’ll make me his heir, if he’s allowed to keep Eagletop.” This, in lieu of a hello.

Eadwin nods. “You have the spirit for it, I think, More so than your brother does, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, my lady.”

Wulfwyn nods, thoughtful. “It’s quieter, without Father. I think I ought to miss him more than I do.”

“It is alright, if you don’t.”

“Mildred cries, but I think it scared her more than anything else. She was scared of Father while he lived, too. I think it would frighten me more if I hadn’t seen it.” Wulfwyn’s dark hair flutters in the breeze, and she watches the birds. “Do you think Lady Margaret would come back? Would Uncle Aethelric marry her?”

Eadwin can’t imagine a world in which she would, or in which after that kind of disgrace any arrangements would be made on her behalf. Everyone knows now that it wasn’t Aethelric who was in her bed. “No, my lady, I cannot see that happening."

“Would she come back for you?”

He hadn’t realized just how attached Wulfwyn had become. “I can’t stay, Lady Wulfwyn, and I could not ask her to come back to this place after everything that has happened.”

Wulfwyn’s shoulders slump, just a little. “She was good to us,” she says. “I wish that Father hadn’t ruined it. He was always ruining things. You were good to us, too, and now you’re leaving because he ruined it.”

“I ruined things for myself, my lady,” Eadwin says gently. “I am sorry that it causes you any grief. I will not be the last person in your life who fails you like this.”

“If I’m Uncle’s heir and I want to keep my seat I can’t marry,” Wulfwyn says. “What do I do for my heir?”

“When your brother is older, you find him a wife. Treat him well in the meantime, so that he has no reason to resent you for having that seat.”

“Do you think Uncle Aethelric will marry? He might change his mind about me being his heir, then.”

“I think he is ill-suited to having a wife or being a father, and I think he knows it.” With any luck, he will also keep his disinterest in accumulating bastards.

“Do you think he will let me hunt? Like Lady Margaret?”

“I think if you ask him, he will be delighted.”

Wulfwyn nods, and hugs her arms across her chest. “Are you going to find Lady Margaret?”

“I intend to.”

“And what then? Uncle says her brothers will try to keep her locked up as a nun.”

“I do not know of any cage that could hold Lady Margaret for long.” He smiles a little, sad. “We’ll go away somewhere. She won’t call herself Lady Margaret anymore.” If she has chosen a new name, he doesn’t know it yet. “I know that she is sorry she had to leave you. So am I.”

Wulfwyn sniffs, and rubs furiously at her eyes. She says, “I hope you find her.” She leaves.

Eadwin stands there in the garden a moment longer, the sun climbing higher into the sky. There is no plan from Heaven—but he knows what he is meant to do, even if he is uncertain of the how.

#.

The man without a name

The nuns are courteous, of course. They have always been courteous.

He is given a small room for himself and his possessions. He is given a chance to meet with the abbess, and she is the first person to whom he tells the whole story, or near enough. Why he asked what he did of Eadwin, why he kept up the affair, why he wants the child and why he planned to flee. He even tells her some of what he saw in the moon mass.

“I am not meant to be a woman,” he says. “Or at least, not only. Heaven has chosen differently for me.”

Mother Robina listens patiently, and if she has judgments she is adept at concealing them.

“I will leave this place sooner or later,” he says. “With or without my brother’s consent.”

Mother Robina lets out a sigh and says, “First, let us see to it that you are comfortable and healthy.”

The nuns are generous, the abbey at Grenacre has always been generous with its guests. He is fed well, and little is asked of him except that he join them for songs and prayers. He prays, he prays more than he ever has in his life, but it’s no longer the desperate struggle to feel something that he doesn’t.

It still doesn’t bring him much peace. Many things can happen on the road, and who would bring him any news of it? Would Felix go looking, if he asked?

He watches the moon and he reads out of Eadwin’s prayer book. Mostly he reads the notes in the margins, in Eadwin’s hand. Many are faded and old, others are newer. Half questions about the nature of the Queen of Heaven, of Heaven itself, of Paradise and the hells a lost soul can fall into on its journey there. Notes on what he likes of certain songs, notes on what he doesn’t. The pages are nearly black with them, and he (the unnamed) feels a little closer reading them, imagining them in Eadwin’s voice.

The moon disappears from the sky. Ho-hey, the moon has gone away.

Theadora comes to visit him once, and for an hour she speaks of nothing that means anything, and he says nothing at all. He feels sorry, because he knows Theadora doesn’t deserve it, but he has nothing to say to her.

Felix comes every third day. Felix tells him about the happenings in the house, what news they’ve had, that Marcus has gone to represent the family at trial. Nothing will be certain until it goes before a judge, but for now it seems as though Aethelric will keep Eagletop, and the killing of his brother will not be deemed a murder. However much Lady Margaret might be in disgrace, it is easy for people to say Wulfric should not have tried to kill her. That it is better to kill your brother to stop him than to let him kill a woman in front of her family.

“He saved me the trouble of going on trial, anyway,” Felix says.

He just looks at Felix, because they both know Felix wouldn’t have lifted a finger for Eadwin.

He (he, the nameless one) looks away. His room at the abbey overlooks the orchard where the nuns grow hazel, pears, and plums. The ducks that supply the abbey with eggs and meat swim in the irrigation channels that were dug decades ago, and which overflow their banks at every heavy rain. He can see the sisters working there, their burgundy habits with their long hanging veils peeking out between the trees. He twists Eadwin’s ring on the chain around his neck, the moonstone rolling over his knuckles.

“Do you suppose he’ll actually come for you?” Felix asks.

“I suppose that if you ask me that question again I’ll stop speaking to you entirely.”

The part of him that is Margaret goes quieter and quieter. The dresses which are his only clothes are more and more bothersome. The nuns have had to let out seams, just a little. It is strange to think that all he wanted was to say goodbye, and now there are things that he will never be able to forgive his brothers for.

He prays, and the first sliver of moon returns to the sky. Hey-ho, the moon is coming home.

#.

Eadwin

When it is decided, when it is clear that Aethelric is now Lord Aethelric (however much he may shudder at the title) he gives Eadwin two horses. “I’d give you more, if I could, but I’m afraid I have to make sure my books are in order, first. With all the expenses for the wedding that didn’t happen.”

“I think you don’t realize how much a good horse is worth outside of these walls.”

“Maybe not,” Aethelric says. He is almost certainly a little drunk Too much to hope that responsibilities might cure him of that entirely. “But even so, I’m sorry I can’t help more. I’ve delayed you enough already. I think she liked this one.” He pats the horse’s neck, one that Margaret took riding a few times.

Aethelric looks Eadwin up and down. “Maybe it’s better you’re leaving. I don’t think I could get used to seeing you in something other than black.”

Eadwin would be lying if he said his own reflection hadn’t startled him on several occasions. He supposes he’ll have to let his hair grow out, or it will be too obvious what he used to be.

Wulfwyn is out to see him leave. She seems, if anything, more tamed since the death of her father. Eadwin can’t decide if it’s her new responsibilities as her uncle’s heir, or if it’s only that Aethelric doesn’t try to make her into a pet for his amusement. He knows Aethelric brings her to all his matters of business, he’s taking quite seriously the matter of training her. There is, Eadwin thinks, still some hope for Eagletop.

“Do you think they’ll let her go?” Aethelric asks.

“I think, my lord, that I have already conspired to get her away from one place in secret.”

Aethelric laughs. “And that worked out so astonishingly well for you.”

“We’ll both be better prepared this time,” Eadwin says. He doubts Margaret will be so inclined to wait for a chance to say goodbye. “If she’s stayed where she’s supposed to be at all, I suspect it’s only so I’ll know where to find her.”

“Handy, that you understand each other so well.”

“Brother—” Wulfwyn starts, and then frowns. “What am I supposed to call you?”

“My name, my lady."

He can tell from her expression that she doesn’t like that at all. “…Eadwin, will you tell Lady Margaret that—that I’m sorry.”

Eadwin nods. “Yes, my lady, and I will tell her that you and your brother and sister are well. I know she worried for what would become of you after we left.”

Wulfwyn sniffs, and nods. She’ll make a fine lady one day.

The day is clear and warm when he sets out, and it is the first time in a very long time that he has traveled alone. Aethelric sent him with money and plenty of food for the first few days, so he makes good time. He stays in a decent tavern with a clean stable, and after he eats he finds a church because he doesn’t think he can bear another night of silence. He hadn’t shown his face in the Eagletop church after he was defrocked.

He isn’t sure if it’s worse to be there again without Margaret. He remembers where they sat, he remembers the brush of her knuckles against the back of his hand.

The fact is that nearly every night since Wulfric was killed Eadwin has startled out of a dream because he hears Margaret screaming his name. He thinks he should have done more. He doesn’t know what.

He hears absolutely none of the mass. It seems as though he sat down and then it was done. He lingers a moment as the people around him begin to leave, watching the candlelight flicker over the face of the Heavenly Queen. The world is the same and yet he no longer understands his place in it. He is fumbling for something to grasp onto, and all he has is Margaret.

He has written pages since that day, more than he’s ever written at any one time in his life. It is the only thing he can think to do when he can’t sleep. He has a folio, and if he’s delayed at all in getting to Margaret it will be bursting by the time he can give them to her. Knowing what he does, he writes as many as he can to suit what Margaret wishes to become.

He would have her happy.

#.

He finds himself thinking of Charlie Rees.

Eadwin was fifteen and had just escaped his father’s house not to return, though he didn’t know it then. He was only looking for some work to get him by for a little while, until it seemed safe enough to return home.

Charlie was probably twenty or so. He and his father and brothers ran small barges up and down the Penbreak, and they hired Eadwin to load cargo and eventually to work the barges as well. Charlie was always the friendliest with him. Everyone else expected Osgar to come along and drag him back home whether he wanted to go or not.

In his memory Charlie has a mop of brown hair that is always falling into his eyes no matter how much his mother scolds him about letting her cut it, and a crooked grin that never really seems to go away. His eyes are green and flecked with brown. In Eadwin’s memory Charlie is still towing in the line, strong arms drawing them in to the shore, humming to himself.

Charlie’s art was in telling outlandish tales everybody knew to be lies, but wanted to hear anyway. He liked to claim that a mermaid had come up out of the river and relieved him of his chastity at the age of twelve, and he described her differently every time, usually with some combination of monstrous and beautiful features, though always with hair of spun gold. Eadwin thought Charlie had probably heard the phrase in a song once and liked it.

He told Eadwin once that everyone knew he hadn’t been born naturally, but had instead been left on the banks of the river by a mermaid. “Oh?” Eadwin asked. “How d’you figure that?”

“Easy,” Charlie said, grinning around the pick in his teeth. “Your eyes are the same color as the mud and it only took you twenty minutes to learn how to swim.” (The water had been frigid, even on that hot summer day, when the Rees boys had taught him to swim.)

“And why did my dear sweet da take me in?”

“Knew he couldn’t get no son of his own, otherwise. But it’s that mermaid blood that gets you fighting.”

Osgar didn’t come looking for him. Didn’t want to be put to shame if Eadwin hit him again, he supposed. He lived in the Rees’ house, sleeping in front of the fire in the kitchen because that was the only place there was room for him. Whenever he got pulled out of a particularly nasty fight it was often by a Rees boy, and it was their mother who would patch him up and scold him for not having a better hold on his temper. Charlie said that even so, he thought Eadwin was her favorite. Said he thought that if Eadwin stuck around much longer, she’d be trying to get him to marry one of Charlie’s sisters.

He might have stayed. He could have made a good life with them, if he had.

They said in the village that the old heathens had used to make a yearly sacrifice into the river to keep the mermaids fat and sated; sheep and cattle and horses and even men and women, if the need were dire enough. In the absence of those sacrifices the river had grown hungry enough to take its own.

Of course it wasn’t true—the sacrifices may have become quieter after the church came, but they had never really stopped. Everyone knew that there were farmers who would take a sharp knife and a bull calf down to the river on full moon nights, or a man with a litter of unwanted pups whose excuse if questioned was always that it was kinder than drowning the poor things. But it was the story that would go around when no one had a good reason for why someone had drowned.

The rains came heavy the last spring that Eadwin spent in the village, the sleepy and slow Penbreak became a churning torrent. He doesn’t know why Charlie was anywhere near the water. Perhaps he was trying to save a barge. Everyone knew to stay away from the river when it was like that.

It took them three days to find him, miles downstream from the village. His father had still been hoping to find Charlie alive.

He lay among the wreckage of everything that had been scoured off the riverbanks by the flood. There was no crooked grin on his face, half buried in the mud.

He remembers Charlie’s brothers carrying him back to the river that had killed him so they could wash the mud from his face before they took him home to their mother. He remembers how no one spoke.

Eadwin stopped speaking entirely. He left them shortly after Charlie was buried, in the night because he didn’t think he could explain why. He walked all night by the light of the moon, a dangerous and stupid thing to do not knowing who or what else might be on the road with him. He encountered nothing except the odd creature scurrying away into the brush, until the thin pale light of dawn.

He still isn’t certain whether or not it was a dream, the owl that lit upon the branches over the road and watched him with black eyes. He stared at it, standing in the middle of the road. His mother had said once that angels sometimes took the shape of birds, and Eadwin thought he had no patience for angels just then when he was only on an earthly road and Charlie Rees was on the road to Paradise.

He thinks he shouted at it, the first time he had spoken since they found Charlie. “What do you want?” He was angry, and he would be angry for a long while afterward, until the first time he spoke to the Heavenly Mother. “What could you possibly want from me now?” He was young enough then it always seemed the next thing would be the thing that broke him for good. Young enough to think: if there is any more than this, I won’t be able to bear it.

The owl turned its head at an angle, and then spread its ghostly pale wings. He watched it soar silently away, across the misty fields and into the trees.

He thinks now that Charlie must have known. Charlie was too keen not to notice, and among everything he would use to tease the people around him, to invent some tale, Eadwin was the only one he would leave alone about girls or anything of that nature. If they didn’t speak of it, it was only because that the time the handful of years between them mattered enormously. If Charlie had lived, it might have been different.

But he did not live, and the road eventually brought Eadwin to Eagletop, as it seems it will soon bring him home again.

#.

The man without a name

Harry comes to visit him once, and he (he, the unnamed) refuses to see him. The nuns try to persuade and cajole but he will not be moved. If his brother wants to speak to him, he will have to make right what he has done, and Harry won’t do that. Harry is too like their father with his pride. He will never admit that he is wrong if he has a choice in the matter.

Marcus comes the next time and says, “He just wants to see that you’re well.”

He says nothing, seeing to the shirt that he is sewing. The nuns gave him the fabric, and he is making it to fit himself. It’s dyed a rich blue and will look quite fine when it’s finished, though he doubts he’ll have the patience to embroider it as it ought to be.

“Is this how it’s always going to be, then?” Marcus asks, annoyed. “Every time we see you, you speak less, until you won’t see us at all?”

He gives Marcus a cold and hard look. “I know now what comes of wanting to see and speak to my brothers one last time. It’s just the same as when we were children—the one thing you can’t abide is that I want the same things you do. I should be content to be the princess locked in a tower.” He looks away again, making his stitches as neat as he can. He is thinking of embroidering two small stag’s heads at the collar. He wants to do them in black.

“Saints and angels, Margaret, I just don’t see what could possibly be worth upending your life like this over when it hasn’t even been a season.”

“Perhaps the life I have been living isn’t worth keeping.” He won’t argue this with Marcus. He will save his breath for prayers.

He spends most of his days in the orchard, watching the ducks. The spring ducklings are entering into that gawky in-between stage before they start to look like adults. That is a little of how he feels, caught in between. He watches the moon grow fatter, and he wonders if he should try to leave on his own, if he could find Eadwin on the road.

The fear that he might miss Eadwin keeps him where he is. He can bear anything, he tells himself, if there is a hope for what will come to him at the end.

He tells himself he can bear anything if they are together when their daughter is born.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon IX.

I Did Love You, Once

6.1k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Margaret

The knights watch her door day and night. They let the children and Sunna the hearth girl come and go as they please, but any other servant or visitor must be allowed entry by Margaret herself. Bramble has the good sense not to try too hard.

Margaret lets it be known that she is dedicating herself to prayer, and keeps to her rooms until she leaves for evening mass. Wulfwyn reports to her that the servants believe she’s doing some witchcraft in her chambers, and that the knights are either bewitched or complicit. Margaret tells her she shouldn’t let the talk worry her, and sits by the fire with her prayer beads, going round and round again until Eadwin comes to see her.

He looks tired, and that worries her more than anything else. His hands are inkstained, she asks what he’s been writing because she doesn’t want to speak about Wulfric, or about their plans, or about how much she’s missed him and dreamed of him in the night. Dreams where she isn’t quite herself, but is what she hopes she will be.

Instructions, he says, for whoever takes up the duties he’s leaving behind. He lets her take his hands, turn them palms up as if she expects to find something there. She slides her fingers through his, looks up at him, at that somber, serious face she loves so much. It will be strange to see him in ordinary clothes, to sleep beside him and be able to wake in the night and know he’s there. “I have to keep telling myself this will all be over soon,” she whispers, wishing it already were. “Has his temper improved at all?” Meaning Wulfric.

“Only because he thinks you’ve been chastened into staying out of sight,” Eadwin says. “Which I would recommend you keep up, if you can bear it.”

“It’s not so lonely, the children come to see me.” She lets out a breath. “I feel so terribly guilty. Wulfwyn thinks she can depend on me. I just wish there was something I could do for them.”

“I know,” Eadwin murmurs. “I worry for them.”

The most he will allow, while they stand there with Sir Laure or Sir Eva about, is to kiss her temple, and touch her cheek. Margaret wants to pull him into the bedchamber and let him have her on the floor, but she lets that thought stay where it is. When they are gone from this place, when they are married, it will not be like this.

The next missive from Harry arrives when she’s on her way out for mass. They will be at Eagletop by tomorrow.

Margaret feels the hard press of the moonstone against her breast and thinks, soon it will all be over.

#.

They have made themselves a nice procession, her brothers. They arrive early in the afternoon with Harry and Felix riding out front, Marcus behind, and Theadora and her sons cloistered away in a carriage. They’re attended by servants and horse grooms, and Margaret doesn’t doubt that at least one of her brothers has a lover hidden away somewhere in the retinue.

She stands on the front steps with Sir Laure between her and Wulfric. Sir Eva, who will be taking the night watch of her bedchamber door, is sleeping.

Aethelric is on Wulfric’s other side, swaying gently as he strives to remain upright, and Eadwin beyond him. If she leans back just a little, Margaret can watch when Eadwin’s hand comes behind Aethelric to grab the back of his coat in a fist and hold him upright. He’s angled to make this less obvious from the front, which makes her wonder how often they’ve done this before.

Theadora, when she steps out into the late spring sunlight, is radiant as she always is. Harry did well for himself with her, and Margaret had always felt a sting of jealousy in how easily grace and femininity came to her. She finds she no longer feels that. Theadora is tall and slender and her curly black hair falls in pretty ringlets where she allows it to be loose. She has the prominent nose of a foreign queen, and it seems to Margaret that the only kind of smile Theadora ever gives is a coy one.

Felix is the blondest of Margaret’s brothers, and the leanest. He carries himself like a soldier, from a brief time fighting for the king. Margaret had used to light a candle for him at the church every day, praying for him to come home safely.

Harry and Theadora have two sons—George and Thomas—and apparently another on the way. Her nephews run up to her, and Margaret bends to catch them both in her arms, holding them tight. “Oh, I’ve missed you,” she says, kissing the tops of their heads. I will miss you.

There is the formal greeting, and when they go inside Felix comes up to embrace her. He pauses when he pulls back, and in a low voice asks: “Who busted that lip for you?”

It’s nearly completely healed, but she isn’t surprised that he noticed. Margaret forces a smile. “Ask me again later.”

Felix’s mouth flattens in displeasure, and he nods. “You’re well, otherwise?”

“Yes,” Margaret says, willing it to be true. She will be well, when she is away. “Have you heard about my black stag?”

“I did,” Felix says. “I heard Aethelric should be the one to tell me the story.”

Margaret holds in a curse when Aethelric’s head turns at the sound of his name. “Hm, what’s that?”

There’s no stopping this now, Aethelric excitedly recounting the story (he now says he expected her horse to sprout wings, that she rode like a barbarian princess) and Wulfric’s mood curdling like cream mixed with lemon juice. Margaret keeps close to Felix’s side, and Everard comes to hide behind them. When Aethelric has finished his story, Margaret leans to whisper in Felix’s ear. “I need to speak to you and Marcus and Harry in my chambers, tonight after mass. It’s urgent.”

Felix glances at her and nods. “Second thoughts?” he mutters.

“Something like that.”

When they were children and Harry would want to split into pairs, Felix always stayed with Margaret. Nearly everything Margaret knows about hunting, about archery and riding is because of Felix. She had asked him once, about a year before, why he had always taken her along. He had gone quiet for a moment, and then he had said: “When our mother was dying after you were born, she said Harry had to worry about learning from Father, but since I didn’t, she made me promise to take care of you.”

Felix had been eight when their mother died. He had always looked after Margaret.

Wulfric seems to like Theadora, though if Margaret has come to know anything about her sister-in-law, Theadora doesn’t much like him. Theadora always seems to know who everyone is, and when she doesn’t she always seems to be able to sniff out just exactly what sort of person they are.

Everything is a little tense, a little uncertain. There is enough time until dinner that Margaret is able to invite her family up to her chambers to see the stag hide and newly mounted antlers. George and Thomas go out to play with Wulfric’s children in the garden while the sun is shining, attended by Rhona and their own nurse.

The talk is all dreadfully dull and ordinary, until it comes up that Margaret has gone to a moon mass. Their father had viewed the moon mass as superstitious nonsense, and so she’s the only one to have done it. Even Theadora—cosmopolitan, worldly Theadora—has only read about them.

It’s easy enough to tell them about the preparations, the prayers and the chanting, but then they want to know what she saw.

Margaret tries to think of anything she can tell them, anything that won’t reveal too much or be marred by trying to articulate it.

Then, she sees her opportunity.

Sir Laure is watching the door. Margaret asks her not to let anyone in. She turns back to her family, who have grown noticeably more attentive. “The Heavenly Mother showed me I am not on the right path,” she says, quiet, like the dangerous secret it is. “I cannot marry Wulfric.”

Felix’s shoulders relax slightly, but Harry bristles. “And you’ve waited until now to say something—”

“We quarreled a few days ago,” Margaret says, “over something small. He struck me hard enough to break my lip. There were witnesses.” She shows Harry the pale scar he hasn’t yet noticed, and he quiets his temper somewhat. He won’t like this, he will complain of it, but being able to level the charge that his sister was mistreated will lessen for him the sting of being seen to renege on a perfectly sound arrangement.

“Sir Laure and Sir Eva had to stop him, or else the Mother only knows what he would have done with me. I tell you, I cannot stay here, but nor can Wulfric know that until I am ready to leave. His pride has not recovered from the day we went hunting. It is like a bed of thorns between us, and the servants and common folk whisper that I’m a witch.”

Margaret draws in a breath, and says the words she knows will put Theadora firmly on her side. “And he is bedding the maidservant he sends to tend to me. Has been since I arrived here.”

Theadora’s mouth presses into a thin line, and she gives Harry a pointed look. She will not have Wulfric for a brother-in-law. Not peaceably.

“Is this what you wished to speak about after mass?” Harry asks.

Margaret nods. “This notion that he wanted a pious wife had well run out by the time I arrived here. Brother Eadwin has been trying to persuade him into letting me go, but unless you make the first move I do not believe that his pride will allow him.”

“No, instead I must injure mine,” Harry mutters. “And after you spoke so fiercely for him. It is a good thing we have not cleared out your rooms at Grenacre.”

“I do not intend to return to Grenacre.” She must lie to them. “Father Algar and Brother Eadwin have offered to help me to whichever convent I may choose. I intend to take the veil, and dedicate my life to the Queen of Heaven—but not somewhere it will be easy for Wulfric to find me.”

Felix’s eyes narrow, but he won’t challenge her here in front of everyone. Harry lets out a laborious sigh, scrubbing his face. “Must you?”

“Surely it would be easier for you,” Margaret says, clinging to hope. “I will be twenty-six by the end of the summer and have reneged on my only real marriage prospect thus far. You will not need to reassure anyone of me if I become a nun.”

Theadora lays a hand on Harry’s arm. “Margaret has always been the most devoted of any of us,” she says, gently. “Your father was the only thing that kept her from making a good marriage or joining the church. I see no harm in letting her go now. You still have two brothers to make family connections, no need to deny your sister her peace. It is no disadvantage to have family in the church.”

Please, Margaret thinks. Prays.

“Very well,” Harry sighs. “We will see you safely out of here and deal with the consequences afterward. Father Algar is the priest at this church, yes?”

“And the abbot, yes.” Margaret will not let her heart soar, not until Felix stops looking at her with that keen and cutting gaze.

“Then I hope you will write to us when you are settled somewhere,” Harry says. “Though I wish you had come to this decision earlier.”

Margaret gives a smile that is more of a grimace. “So do I.”

Felix glances at the window, at the shifting light, and stands. “Margaret, I have a mind to go for a ride before we dine. Show me this place that’s driven you away already.”

“Let me collect my coat,” Margaret says, not looking forward to this.

Felix waits until they are well past the gates, and riding out along the edge of the trees with no one around. “So is it a lover you like better? Because I don’t believe you have the makings of a nun. Not even a Knight of the Sun, though I know they’re always hungry for archers.”

Margaret hadn’t wanted to cry, but she cracks like an egg. She draws her horse up short, and gets out of the saddle, grasping it for support as she shakes, weeping. Felix dismounts and leads his horse around to her. “Maggie, what is it?” he asks, soft.

“Can you keep it secret for me?” she asks. “Can you please, Felix, keep my secret and let me go?”

“It would help if I knew what and where.”

“I can’t tell you until you give me your word.”

“I hate to see you cry,” Felix says, pulling out his kerchief to blot her face dry. “You have my word, on our mother. The earthly one, and I suppose the Heavenly one as well.”

“I do have a lover,” Margaret says, “he has asked me to marry him, and I intend to leave with him.”

Felix considers that, glancing back at the castle. “I assume it’s not the drunk one,” he says, “since it would be hard to slip away unnoticed.”

“No,” Margaret laughs, more tears welling in her eyes. “No, it’s not Aethelric.”

Felix thinks a moment longer, and looks at her. “You left Grenacre with the monk, didn’t you?”

There are times Margaret wishes her brother knew her less well. “Shortly after we left, Father sent a man to try and bring me home. Brother Eadwin sent him away without incident, but I was so frightened, I—” She stops, and pulls up her sleeve to show Felix the thin scars. “I’m not going back to Grenacre.”

Felix takes her wrist, a pained expression on his face. “Saints and angels,” he murmurs.

“Eadwin found me and took me to the church,” she murmurs, letting the ‘brother’ drop because she isn’t fooling Felix. “I felt safe with him and I knew he looked at me as he shouldn’t, so I asked him if he would be my first, so that it needn’t be as terrible as Theadora’s wedding night.”

“And he obliged you, did he?” Felix asks, dry.

“After a great deal of persuasion,” Margaret says with a faint smile. “Believe me, Felix, I had to chase him down, and it was me that wouldn’t let him alone afterward. I was as bad as Marcus is.” She wipes at her eyes. “He’s done everything he can to keep me safe here, but now we have to go.”

Felix is looking at her again. “You’re with child, aren’t you? That’s why this sudden hurry.”

“It isn’t the only reason,” she says. “I saw what I could be, in the moon mass. Something I can only be if I leave.” She looks up at Felix, begging him to understand. “I won’t be able to come home again.”

“No, you won’t.” Felix sighs, and draws her into his arms, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “Though you might have the decency to write to me under whatever new name you choose for yourself. Tell me what it is you needed to become.”

Margaret laughs softly, squeezing him tight. “I saw our mother in the mass. The earthly one.”

Felix pulls back, holding her by the shoulders. “Did you?”

Margaret nods. “She is at peace. She said things I needed to hear.”

Felix nods. “And Brother Eadwin, you trust him to keep his promises to you?”

“Yes.”

“I would like to speak with him.”

Margaret lets out a breath. “Ask him to show you the church.”

Felix nods again, and leans in to kiss the top of her head. “If you ever need help, just write. There won’t be an army in the world that can stand against me.”

Margaret smiles. “My hope is that you won’t go against any armies ever again.”

#.

Eadwin

He supposes he knows when Felix Beckett asks to be shown the church. Margaret is just past him, she gives Eadwin a particular look. He says, of course, it shouldn’t take long. Shall we walk?

“My sister says she trusts you,” Felix says as they leave the hearing of anyone else. “What I want to know is if I should.”

Eadwin glances at him. “Did she tell you that I tried to get her away from here before this?”

“What did you try?”

Eadwin sighs. “I asked her to take the veil.”

Felix snorts. “And how did that work out for you?”

“She slapped me.”

“Good.” Felix folds his arms over his chest. “What kind of life is it that you expect to take her to?”

“Not one as comfortable as she’s accustomed to, I’m sure,” he says. “But she won’t hear of anything else. I mean to take her to my family, at least until we can get our feet under us.”

“And you won’t be found there?”

“No.”

“She says you intend to marry her.”

“I do.”

Felix nods, and they stop along the path, looking at each other. “Just know this,” Felix says, “if ever she gets word to me that she’s in need of help, there is not a thing in the world that would stop me nor a man I would not kill to see her safe and well.”

Eadwin nods. “I’m glad there’s someone who wants to see her safe and happy as much as I do.”

Felix smiles, just a little, and it is easy to see Margaret in his face. “You’ll be more faithful to her than you were to your vows, I hope.”

“He would be a stronger man than I would have anything left in him to go chasing after others,” Eadwin says. “And if I somehow managed to stray, I’m sure she would set me right.”

Felix seems satisfied, and they make a quick tour of the church and an introduction to Father Algar. Felix says, “I understand you’ve been a great help to my sister. I want to thank you for that.”

Father Algar glances between Felix and Eadwin, and nods. “Of course, my lord. I only wish we could do more.”

Felix returns to the castle without Eadwin to take dinner before mass. Eadwin is gathering up the last of his personal papers that he has decided he must take, stowing them in the same aged leather pack in which he first brought his scant few belongings to the abbey. Father Algar brought it out of storage himself, to avoid any whispering. Eadwin’s old clothes had long since been given to the poor, and he had his doubts that he could still wear the same shirt he had had at twenty. He has instead new garments, just enough to take him home.

There are also men’s clothes that he hopes will fit Margaret, if she wants them. It isn’t altogether unusual for the abbey to commission clothes, if they have nothing that will suit the beggar that has come to their door.

He thought he ought to send a letter, to warn his family that he was coming—but he cannot risk his rare correspondence being noticed. Better everyone assume that they have long since fallen out of touch. Few of the brothers even know what Eadwin’s surname was before he took his vows.

He feels as though a thread has been drawn tight, now that the hour of their departure is near. All he has to do is make it from one end to the other before it snaps, before he falls.

He doesn’t know exactly when Margaret will be ready, but they have only three days before the wedding’s set date. He would be happy to leave in the middle of the night after mass, but he needs a sign from Margaret, and enough time to tell Aethelric so that they might have horses.

He has discussed this with Father Algar, that he will leave his habit and aught else that belongs to the abbey, and Algar will perform the ceremony to release him from his vows after he is gone. It grieves him to think of never seeing these walls again, or this particular statue of the Mother sitting above the altar.

His home never had a church when he was a boy, though he recalls hearing from Fortune that one was being built. He can’t recall what order was overseeing it.

It is a quiet evening. All of Margaret’s family are present, the younger of her nephews seated in her lap and asleep halfway through. Margaret lets him sleep against her shoulder, rubbing his back as she murmurs her prayers, and Eadwin thinks he should like to see this again, with their own child. He does not know what their lives will look like after they leave, but he is beginning to imagine.

Most of her family depart as soon as the mass ends, but Margaret and Felix linger and step to the side of the sanctuary to speak to him. “Tomorrow night,” she says, “I’ll be ready to leave. Harry says he’ll tell Wulfric I’ve gone to a convent the next morning.”

Eadwin nods. “I’ll make sure everything is ready.”

#.

The man without a name

When he is most himself he feels distant from his brothers. It is because he is a secret, he thinks. They look at him and they call him by Margaret’s name and it is a name that belongs to him less and less. Sometimes it fits as it always has, and sometimes it becomes a terrible weight. He still can’t find one that fits better.

He hardly sleeps that night, thinking of his imminent escape. Freedom is so tantalizingly close, for the first time in his life. His fingers itch for something to cut his hair. Margaret’s nursemaid always used to fuss over her hair, scolding furiously for every twig and bit of moss she had to comb from it. He wants to cut it short, no longer than his chin, wants to be free of the weight and free of the need to contain it in braids or nets.

As soon as he’s away from this place, he thinks, he’ll have Eadwin help him cut his hair. He’ll put on a shirt and trousers and when he sees his reflection he will finally be as he ought to be.

Margaret frets about the loss of her beauty, she worries about her hair and her breasts and the softness of her features that has always earned her compliments. When he feels more himself, he worries about that less.

It feels strange to be aware of himself, sometimes. Margaret has spent so much time ignoring him, quieting him, that it was easy to forget he even existed. He remembers now an argument with her nursemaid, Margaret must have been four or five. He can’t remember what she had done, but the nursemaid was scolding her for not being ladylike. Margaret had stamped her foot and declared, “When I’m a man, I won’t have to listen to you!” The thought makes him smile, now.

Secreting the moonstone under his shift in the morning, he thinks: tonight I will be free. He will wake early just to see his first free sunrise. He will hold Eadwin close and they will no longer have to hide even from strangers.

He dresses and takes down the stag hide and antlers from the wall. The lie is that she’s sending them to Grenacre with Felix, as a gift. The secondary lie is that it’s to appease Wulfric. He could think of no other way to explain taking them down, packing them. Losing the books because they are too heavy he can bear. He can’t bear to leave these behind.

He strokes his hand over the hide, finding the hole left by that first arrow, behind the shoulder. He can slot a finger into it, and he thinks I will never see a stag as fine as this one again.

He dedicates the day to spending as much time with his family as he can, memorizing the faces of his brothers and nephews, their laughter. He commits to memory his nephews in a grand game with Wulfwyn, and how even Everard seems a little bolder with them, perhaps because they are excited about his dog. He ties one of his ribbon into the hair of Mildred’s doll, and tells himself that this has to be enough.

#.

Eadwin

Eadwin is late to the castle, because things must be made ready. The others in the abbey think he’s preparing to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady on the Water, and because of this they think he must be quite ill. Aethelric, he is surprised to find, is sober—though he complains of an aching head.

“Listen,” Eadwin says quietly, “it must be tonight.”

Aethelric nods. “I’ll tell Rhona.” He looks at Eadwin with the clearest eyes he’s had in years. “Good luck, Brother.”

Eadwin can only nod and say, “Thank you.”

It is near midday, and the Becketts are in the great hall, talking and laughing. Margaret’s brothers are discussing going riding after the meal. Sir Laure and Sir Eva have stepped out for a moment, thinking Margaret plenty safe while surrounded by her family. Margaret looks at him, smiles for just a moment.

Maybe he can’t give her a cathedral, but if he can give her any reason to smile that will be enough.

It’s an artful performance, how well the family can make courteous gestures to Wulfric when he arrives. They all fall into particular roles, and Eadwin thinks: they did this with the old Lord Henry. They think they know what kind of man Wulfric is, they think they know how to handle him.

Aethelric arrives last, but before the kitchens have brought out anything besides wine. Eadwin takes a cup and goes to persuade Mildred out from beneath the table, since he can see Rhona growing exasperated. “Lady Mildred, please sit at the table. I heard that the kitchens made raspberry cakes today, and you won’t get one if you’re under the table.”

Mildred climbs up as Bramble hurries into the hall. She looks like a spooked hare, and by all rights she shouldn’t be here just now, with Margaret’s family all about. Eadwin stands, an uneasy feeling settling in his gut. Aethelric rises, too.

Bramble goes to Wulfric, whispering to him. Wulfric looks at her, and then seizes her arms. Bramble yelps in fear. “Are you ready to make that accusation?” Wulfric demands, loud enough to silence the hall. “Are you damned ready to accuse?”

Bramble nods, shaking. “M’lord,” she says, loud for everyone else’s benefit. “Lady Margaret is with child. I heard Felix Beckett telling Lady Theadora.”

The air goes out of the room.

“Is it true?” Wulfric shouts, rounding on Margaret.

“My lord,” Margaret says, with a shake in her voice, “you can’t trust the gossip of servants who have already turned against me. Particularly not one who has cause to be jealous.” She doesn’t sound certain enough. She sounds too frightened.

Wulfric grabs her by the elbows, and Margaret flinches. Felix rises to his feet, reaching for the knife at his hip, but his brother Henry stops him. Eadwin hears him whisper: “You knew about this?”

“Tell me who!” Wulfric’s face is scarlet with rage. Eadwin has never seen him like this.

Margaret swings a fist across Wulfric’s face. There are tears on her cheeks, but her expression and voice are furious. “You don’t deserve his name,” she snarls. “You arrogant, weak, pathetic little man.”

Wulfric takes a fistful of her hair and throws Margaret to the stone floor and Theadora screams. Eadwin moves, only peripherally aware of Felix throwing his brother off and leaping over the table to put himself between his sister and Wulfric. Eadwin tries to gather her up, but Margaret is ready to spit acid, her fingers curled into claws, straining to fight.

Eadwin looks up, and Wulfric’s gaze is fastened on him, cold. “You son of a whore,” Wulfric says, low and cold. “Is that what you chose her for?”

He won’t defend himself, not to Wulfric. He pulls Margaret to her feet, holds her back until Marcus can get hold of her.

“Is that what you were doing while you were taking your sweet precious time to get here?” Wulfric roars. “Fucking the woman you were supposed to be bringing to me?”

Eadwin just looks at him. “I told you to let her go. It would have spared everyone this mess.”

He is expecting it when Wulfric hits him, expecting really to be knocked down (it has been a long time since he fought) but Margaret makes a sound that’s almost a howl and she must have broken free of her brother because she bolts past Felix and Eadwin only sees the silver flash of that dagger before the blade is buried in Wulfric’s shoulder.

She isn’t trying to kill him, Eadwin thinks. She would know to go for the belly.

Wulfric knocks her down again, her head striking the table, and he kicks her before Felix bowls him backwards and turns to pick up his sister. There’s blood seeping down the side of Margaret’s face. Eadwin becomes conscious of the fact that he tastes copper as he pulls himself up.

“Arrogant whore,” Wulfric snarls, pulling himself up and jerking the dagger out of his shoulder. It clatters across the table, bloody, and a dark stain seeps through Wulfric’s grey doublet. “Did you think you could keep it up? Think you could bear some bastard and I wouldn’t notice?”

“You were never going to see my child’s face,” Margaret snarls, her hair torn loose from its net. Eadwin can’t tell if her brothers are holding her up or holding her back. The blood from the cut on her head is leaving black speckles on her blue dress. “I could never marry a man as vile as you.”

The children are pressed against the back wall. Mildred is crying and Wulfwyn is trying to shield her little sister’s eyes. Theadora is with her sons, holding them against her breast. Everard only shivers.

Wulfric isn’t fool enough to think he can lay hands on Margaret again, not with her brothers looking at him like that. He turns his gaze back on Eadwin.

Eadwin thinks: I do not want to die like this. His eyes fall on the hearth, the iron poker.

Wulfric begins to move forward and Eadwin starts for the fire, wrapping his hand around the black iron.

Aethelric grabs Wulfric’s shoulder and spins him round, and it’s difficult for Eadwin to understand what he sees because it looks like Aethelric only punches his brother in the stomach—but all the air goes out of Wulfric in a gasp, and it is just then that Eadwin sees the hilt of Margaret’s dagger. Bramble, all but forgotten, screams.

Aethelric draws Wulfric to his shoulder, holding the dagger fast in his brother’s belly. “If our mother had known how much worse than our father you would be, she would have smothered you in the cradle,” he says, in a low voice. “I should have finished the job for her, killed you before you killed Anna. I’ll not let you take anything else from me.” The dagger comes out and goes back in, and Aethelric stares stonily over Wulfric’s shoulder as his brother sags against him, dying.

Aethelric puts a hand on the back of Wulfric’s head. “Do you know the real tragedy of this, Wulfric?” he asks, soft. “I did love you, once.” Aethelric gives Wulfric a shove, and his brother crumples to the floor, dying.

Aethelric wipes the dagger on one of the napkins and lifts his head. “I trust we all saw the same thing,” he says, “that my brother went mad and was at risk of killing Lady Margaret if he was not stopped.”

No one speaks. Even the crying children have gone quiet.

Aethelric turns the dagger over, offering Margaret the hilt. “This belongs to you.”

She takes it, returning the blade to her sleeves, and lets out a breath.

“Brother Eadwin,” Aethelric says, not looking at him. “When you have a moment, ask my brother’s lawyers if they would still like to be employed. I will have need of them.” He casts a contemptuous glance at Bramble. “I will deal with you later. Rhona, take the children to their rooms.” Bramble flees while Rhona gathers up the children. Wulfwyn’s face is white as a sheet.

Henry Beckett turns to his sister. “What else did you feel was not important to tell me?” he asks, his voice low and edged.

Margaret glares at him. “You are not my father.”

“Was the convent a lie?” Henry demands.

“Of course it was a fucking lie,” Margaret says. “Why would you ever believe I would exchange one cage for another?”

“Damn you, Margaret!” Henry overturns a bench with a thunderous noise. “And you,” he grabs Felix by the shirt. “You knew, why didn’t you damn well tell me?”

“Because you’d react like this,” Felix says, flat. Lady Theadora has already rushed her sons away, isn’t there for her husband to rage at her.

Henry Beckett turns and looks at Eadwin, his hands curled into fists. “If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you,” he says, and he grabs his sister by the arms. “Get her things,” he barks at his brothers, pulling her toward the doors. “We’re going home.”

“No,” Margaret says, and when Henry doesn’t let her go, “No! No, I’m not going back!” She pulls out her dagger again and Henry grabs her wrist.

“You won’t be pulling that stunt again,” he says, and twists her arm until she releases the dagger.

Margaret fights him, but her brother is too strong for her. “Eadwin!” Margaret screams. “Eadwin, please, I can’t go back!”

He starts for her, and Felix stops him. “Don’t,” he says, “he will kill you.” He looks at Eadwin for a moment, and as the door falls shut behind a screaming Margaret he says, “Come in a month. Henry will put her in the convent at Grenacre, where he thinks he can keep an eye on her. That’s the last kindness I’ll ever do for you.” He tucks Margaret’s dagger into his belt and turns to leave.

Eadwin stands, not sure he can bear to sit down or stand still. He feels he might be sick. Would Margaret survive a month?

Aethelric sinks onto an upright bench. “That was ugly,” he says. “And it will be ugly, I suspect, unless I can convince a court that I killed my own brother to protect Lady Margaret. Kinslaying is a hard thing to defend.” He picks up a spilled cup, fills it with wine once more. The body of Wulfric lays on the floor between them like the carcass of a boar. Aethelric drinks and closes his eyes. “Lucky that one of her brothers seems to have liked you at least a little, I suppose,” he says. “I imagine you won’t wait here for a month.”

“No,” Eadwin says, “I have to—I have to speak to her.” He has to tell her he will come for her.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Aethelric says. “I doubt Lord Henry will let her out of his sight until they’re well away from here.” He looks at the body of his brother, something like sad weariness on his face. “I can’t believe how many years we spent fearing him.” He looks at Eadwin. “If you’re fast, you may be able to get one of the servants to take her a note, or some other sign from you.”

Eadwin starts to move for the door, and stops when his hand touches the oak. “My lord Aethelric.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that.”

“My lord,” Eadwin repeats. “Thank you for saving my life. And if I may counsel you one last time—make Wulfwyn your heir.”

Aethelric laughs softly and nods. “That is a good idea. Thank you, Brother. If this is goodbye, then I am sorry of it—and I wish you luck.”

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon VIII.

Witch

6.5k | kofi | ao3 | tag

The man without a name

It becomes more and more difficult to look at his reflection when he rises in the morning. Her reflection, he supposes, though she sometimes feels terribly distant. He has been trying to think of a name for himself, but nothing meets with satisfaction. He has no want of family names, and it is difficult to know where else to look. He tries on names like rings, taking them off when they don’t fit well or become a nuisance.

He dresses in Margaret’s clothes, he brushes out her hair.

Aethelric has put a permanent fear into the back of his mind, and so even when the opportunity presents itself he doesn’t slip away with Eadwin. They do speak about their plans, quietly and in coded words. Eadwin thinks they should be able to slip away quietly and get horses in the village, be gone before anyone knows to look for them. He (the one without a name) has been deciding what to take and what to leave, what he most wants in the life that lies ahead and what he cannot bear to leave behind.

Sometimes, when he is more Margaret than the other, it feels strange to think of himself in these terms, as if he’s wearing a shirt that doesn’t quite fit. The shift is never predictable, and he doesn’t quite know what to do about it. He thinks it ought to be easier—if he is meant to be a man, then it ought to come more naturally to him.

He secrets things away in the night when the servants have left him. Eadwin’s prayer book is hidden beneath the false bottom of her chest of linens. The amulet he wears around his neck, hidden under his clothes. He knows it’s dangerous, but it helps him to bear the distance he has to keep from Eadwin to feel that he has some piece of him so close. At night he takes the stone from under his shift, holding it up to catch the candlelight.

He heard Aethelric ask Eadwin what had happened to the amulet. Eadwin had said he gave it as a gift to someone who needed it more.

He doesn’t know how he can become what he saw in his visions, but he thinks if the Queen of Heaven showed it to him then it must be possible.

He wishes Eadwin could have seen him as he was in those visions.

The thunderstorm that came the day the moon began to wane had made a terrible mess of Eagletop. Hedges battered and barn rooftops half ripped away. An especially tall pine in the forest was struck by lightning, and at night it can be seen to glow. It is too damp for the trees around it to catch, Heaven be thanked, but the pine is burning from the inside out, and the common folk are whispering that it is an omen of troubles to come. The servants in the castle are still whispering about coal black stags, the burning pine is only a new element. Lady Margaret is bad luck.

Lady Margaret may be a witch.

He doesn’t know what witchcraft they think she’s done. Perhaps they’re just afraid of what she might do.

If she were a witch, he thinks dryly, then what he wants to do might be a great deal easier. Just slip into a new skin, like putting on a coat. Turn Wulfric into a mean little terrier that even Everard won’t have any love for.

Days pass, and still the blood doesn’t come, because of course it doesn’t. He counts how many days he’s been in Eagletop, how many days before the laundresses might notice. Can they be gone before that?

It is difficult to imagine the two futures he most wants at once. The one where he grows into what he saw in the vision, and the one where he has Eadwin and the child that—if all goes well—will be with them before next spring. He imagines the girl in idle moments, hair as dark as Eadwin’s, tall and growing well like her uncles.

His brothers. He does want to see them again, he can’t bear the thought of leaving without seeing them all one last time. In the back of his mind Eadwin’s question keeps creeping in, making his stomach twist in knots. And if Lord Henry decides he will not let you leave?

Margaret will not be a prisoner again, nor will he. It is one of the few things in which the two halves of himself are in perfect agreement.

The only thing he isn’t afraid of is being forced to marry Wulfric, and he knows why Eadwin didn’t mention the possibility. All it will take to shatter the betrothal is to reveal what has happened. It would be dangerous—but it would protect Margaret from at least one end. It won’t be necessary to give anyone a name, Margaret wasn’t sent from Grenacre with a proper chaperone. It could have been anyone.

They can guess when Eadwin disappears.

The notion that they will no longer have to be in secret, that they will be able to sleep beside each other sustains him in the long dark hours when he lays awake at night. He reaches an arm across the empty side of the bed and thinks this is only a trial to be endured for a short while, and then it will all be different.

#.

Eadwin

Wulfric has been avoiding Margaret. Margaret tells him that Wulfric has been taking more of his meals in his chambers, and she makes a cool mention that Bramble is always the one that takes them. “I don’t half wonder if he puts her in my chambers to report back to him,” she murmurs.

The day is bright and signs of summer are on the air, and he has found Margaret at archery with Aethelric and the children. Aethelric, he gathers, is there largely to be a nuisance while Margaret tries to teach Wulfwyn and Everard sits with his dog and Mildred pulls the blooms off flowers, heaping them in a ring around her doll.

“Mind your feet,” Margaret says, correcting Wulfwyn’s posture. “Archery isn’t just about your arms and shoulders. Your whole body goes into it.”

“My arms hurt.”

“Everything will. You’ll have to practice, build up strength. That’s the only way to improve.”

“When did they start you on the bow, Lady Margaret?” Aethelric asks, lazing about with his own bow that—so far as Eadwin can tell—he has not drawn at all. “I suppose you were Mildred’s age?”

“I was a year older than Everard, and too short for my bow,” Margaret says.

“Ah, we should start you now,” Aethelric says to his nephew, “then maybe when you’re grown you’ll be halfway decent.”

Everard picks up his dog, face turning red.

“My lord,” Eadwin says, “leave the poor child alone.”

“He won’t always be a child,” Aethelric says. “If he isn’t careful his father will declare Elred legitimate and he’ll be made a second son. You don’t want to be like me, do you?”

“Is Lord Wulfric educating his other son?” Margaret asks. “I haven’t seen him.”

“He is being educated in the abbey for now, my lady,” Eadwin says. “Though I’m sure his father has no intention for him to go into the church.” Eadwin has little to do with Elred’s education, but his impression is that the boy has benefited from distance from his father. He idolizes Wulfric, of course, because he doesn’t really know his father except as the man who sometimes brings him extravagant gifts and speaks of the man Elred will someday be.

“No, this one would be better suited for church life,” Aethelric says, flicking Everard on the back of the head. Everard yelps—likely more in surprise than pain.

“For the love of the Mother, leave him alone,” Margaret snaps.

Aethelric turns that troublesome grin on Margaret, clasping his hands together in mock prayer. “Oh, apologies, my lady, please don’t turn me into a newt or cast your evil eye upon me.”

Margaret gives him a scowl and turns back to Wulfwyn. “Do you mark the wind? How do you think you need to adjust your aim to strike true?”

Eadwin gestures for Aethelric to step aside with him, and Aethelric is cooperative in a way that suggests he’s been bored for a while. “I find myself,” Eadwin says in a low voice, “in the less than admirable position of needing to ask you for help.”

Aethelric’s brows rise to arches over his blue eyes. “Help? My dear Brother Eadwin, what could you possibly need my help for? You haven’t gotten her in trouble, have you?” At Eadwin’s silence, all color drains out of Aethelric’s face. “For fuck’s sake, Brother!” he hisses.

“It isn’t a torch and a whip, but it’s convinced her to leave,” Eadwin says. “It is that I need your help with. I’m going with her.”

“So we’re going to lose you after all,” Aethelric mutters. “This is better than with you underground, I suppose. What are you going to do about the abbey?”

“Father Algar is already prepared for my defrocking.” Eadwin lets out a breath, glancing back toward Margaret. Wulfwyn’s arm has a faint tremble, but her posture is good and her expression is determined. It will be a terrible thing for Wulfwyn and Everard to lose Margaret now. “She wants to see her brothers again, before,” he says. “But I need to be sure I can get her out of here safely.”

“You’re going to need horses,” Aethelric says.

“I thought we could get them in town.”

“No, you’re going to need them quickly, and the old nags in town aren’t worth your money.” Aethelric thinks a moment, restlessly tapping his bow against his leg. “The stable master has a soft spot for Rhona—” The children’s nurse. “—and she owes me a favor.”

Eadwin looks at him skeptically.

Aethelric gives him a thin and cold smile. “You haven’t blessed any of my brother’s bastards out of her, and for that, she owes me a favor. Tell me when you want to go, I’ll give her a very nice bottle of wine and tell her to keep Master Lewin busy for a few hours. She can decide how to handle that on her own, so long as he stays away from the stables.”

“And the other hands?”

“Pff,” Aethelric scoffs. “It’s like you don’t even know how this house celebrates an impending wedding. Get them by the kitchens, get them drunk. I am a very generous man with my brother’s wine, after all.” He puts a hand on his heart, smiles.

“Indeed you are,” Eadwin says, corners of his mouth pulling up. “Sometimes I think you would have made a good lord.”

“Best shut your lying mouth, Brother, I count on everyone thanking Heaven that I was born second. Once I’m done with you, I intend to spend a year as the worst sort of useless layabout. Best put a good disguise on our lady, if you mean to get her through the gates after dark.” He starts to saunter back toward the others, assuming they’re done.

“Aethelric,” Eadwin says.

“Hm?”

“Is Bramble spying on her?” He knows Aethelric knows the names of all the servants, knows who they are, what they do, where they ought to be at any given moment.

“Of course she is,” he says. “She’s hoping it means the trouble she’s currently in will have a little more favor from my brother, even if it’s a girl.” Aethelric shrugs his shoulders. “It’s going to be chaos here, if you pull this off. I hope you do, though.”

“Do you think Bramble knows?”

“I’m sure she’s suspicious, but no, I don’t think she knows. She would go screaming to Wulfric if she did know. If Wulfric ends up with a wife he hates, he’ll occupy himself with her a great deal longer than he would otherwise—and she would know that if she hid it from him, or he believed she was stupid enough to miss it when it was under her nose, she could expect worse treatment than he’d give to Lady Margaret.” Aethelric pauses a moment, thinking. “I think I should encourage Bramble to go to the church, when you leave. They should be able to shelter her for a few days, until he forgets about her.”

Aethelric is almost a decent man, when he isn’t drunk. He announces loudly: “Mother in Heaven, I need a drink.”

“Your aim will not improve,” Margaret calls, watching with folded arms as Wulfwyn looses an arrow. It strikes the outer edge of the target, and is the first to make actual contact.

“My mood will.” Aethelric glances back at Eadwin, lowering his voice again. “Wherever you intend to go, you had best make sure that woman can hunt.”

“I could not stop her if I wished to.”

Aethelric nods and goes back to sit by Everard and Mildred, barking at a servant to fetch him a drink. He leans back on his hands, watching as Margaret takes up her bow to demonstrate something to Wulfwyn. Eadwin lingers at a distance.

Margaret believes it will be a daughter, and he can imagine that she would like a daughter like Wulfwyn. He worries what will happen to the children. He tells himself to ask Father Algar to ensure that their next teacher is kind to them, if Wulfric will even have any of the brothers educating his children ever again.

The abbey stands to become a great deal poorer because of this.

Before he had come up to the castle that morning the two Knights of the Sun had come to see him, speaking in the churchyard while few others were yet awake—accustomed as they are to rising before the sun. They had put on their surcoats, golden yellow embroidered with a scarlet sun, and something about it made them seem taller. More imposing.

“We hear,” Sir Eva said delicately, “that you expect to soon be making an expedient journey.”

Eadwin tried to take the measure of their expressions. “I am.”

“We wish to help,” Sir Laure said.

Two knights that are, so far as he knows, in good standing with their order seemed an unlikely help for a disgraced monk and his pregnant lover. “Why?”

“We each took an oath to defend our Heavenly Mother’s children,” Sir Eva said, standing idle with her hand on the hilt of her sword, “and we do not think it is right to allow harm to come where it may be prevented. We have heard many rumors about the lady that give us pause.”

“You don’t credit them, I hope.”

“No, fortunately neither of us are inclined to believe that the lady is a witch,” Sir Laure replied, her arms folded over her surcoat. “But that others do is troubling to us.”

“You might go up to the castle,” he said, “say you wish to visit the lady, to congratulate her on her coming marriage. Then you might offer, if she should wish it, to keep her company and serve as her chaperones until the wedding. Men can begin to get ideas about the women that are promised to them when the date draws near, and Lady Margaret is a pious woman.”

Sir Eva smiled in a way that didn’t touch her eyes. “Yes. She is also a Rose.”

Sir Laure cleared her throat quietly, this obviously being her idea, and something Sir Eva had to be persuaded to. “I think that sounds like an excellent idea,” she said. “We are, after all, servants of the faithful, first and foremost.” She gave a thin smile. “Tell me, is there much discontent within the lord’s house?”

“All such houses are full of spiders,” Eadwin said. “You have heard the rumors.”

They plan to come in the afternoon. Eadwin thinks he has never spent so much of his life engaged in deception, even when he made his living by picking pockets for a short while.

Margaret looks at him over the top of Wulfwyn’s head, and he prays that they escape without incident, that the chaos and scandal they will leave behind does not touch them.

He prays that all this planning and secrecy will be enough.

#.

Margaret

When she is herself, it feels almost as if the man who is yet unnamed is only a dream. As though she is playing a grand game of pretend and it is foolish to imagine that she can ever be a man such as she saw.

It pains her to think on, and she tries to remember that it was a vision shown to her by Heaven. She must not take that lightly.

The knights come up to speak to her, and Margaret is relieved to welcome them in, to have an excuse to send Bramble away when she lingers too long. Sir Eva and Sir Laure make themselves at home in her chambers, and one of them is always with her. Never in full armor, and rarely carrying more than a dagger—in the lord’s house it would be an insult, an implication—but always just at her shoulder.

They offer also an excuse for Margaret to go riding. “You were right, you know,” she tells Sir Laure.

Laure glances at her, the wind tugging at the strings of her linen cap. “About what, my lady?”

“That not everything one can wish for is impossible,” Margaret says. “Though I confess I still don’t know how—but the Heavenly Queen showed it to me in a vision, so I suppose it must be.”

Sir Laure smiles faintly. “And you? How do you feel?”

“Afraid,” Margaret says. “Unsure.”

“That’s natural, I would think. It’s not a small thing.” Sir Laure clucks to her horse, stopping the mare as a cart crosses their path. “My brother is like you,” she says, leaning with her forearms across the front of the saddle. “Our father was relieved, actually, otherwise he wouldn’t have a son at all. I have four other sisters.”

“Would that we could all be so lucky,” Margaret mutters.

“He has a wife,” Sir Laure says. “They have an understanding, and three children.”

“How do they manage to avoid suspicion?”

“She picks men that have his coloring and look enough like him. It’s all quite tidy, really. Not that it seems you’ll have that problem.”

“No, I think I have a rather messier one,” Margaret says.

Sir Laure glances at her, looks her up and down. “You aren’t already…?”

“I am.”

Sir Laure lets out a low breath, and sits up to spur her horse forward as the cart moves out of their way. “I see why you’ll be making a journey. There are easier means, you know.”

“I do,” Margaret says. “But I can’t.”

“The Roses encourage it, I thought. That’s why so many of their brothers and sisters can make the medicine.”

“It isn’t about that,” Margaret says. “I can’t get rid of this one, just to take his.” To produce another child for Wulfric to bully and belittle. “I want this one. Her father wants her, too.”

Sir Laure looks askance at her as they ride, passing the first spring berries in the hedges. “You really love him, don’t you?”

Margaret feels the press of the moonstone against her skin. “He properly sees me, more than most people do. Or at least, he cares enough to look.” She thinks of him listening to her breath the first time they went to bed, when he couldn’t be sure she would speak.

Sir Laure nods, and they ride in silence for a while, out along the fields and houses. When the farmers see her, some of them make signs against evil, touching two fingers under each of their eyes to ward off the malevolent force of her gaze. Even if she weren’t with child, it would be safer to leave.

“Where will you go?” Sir Laure asks.

“I’d rather not say.” Eadwin has shown her on a map, but the village has never been big enough for mapmakers to actually put it down.

“Very well. But you do have a place?”

“Yes. I think so.” She wonders what Eadwin’s family will think. “At least for a little while. He’s fool enough to worry that I’ll want anything more than a warm place to sleep and enough to eat.” She thinks: I would sleep in a barn if he were with me. Give birth in a stable.

“It’s good that your desires are so practical,” Sir Laure says with a faint smile. “Your brothers will be here soon, will they not?”

“Yes, they sent my lord a message to say they were a week from Eagletop.” It’s Felix she most wants to see, Felix who always understood her more than the others. Felix who she hopes will understand her now. She will tell him: I tried to kill myself with the dagger you gave me so that I wouldn’t be a prisoner again.

“Your brother,” she asks Sir Laure. “How did he do it?”

#.

She is sitting by the fire in the great hall with the children when Wulfric comes stomping through in some sort of mood. Eadwin has been sitting by, reading. Aethelric, who seems to always be lurking about these days, has been laying on a bench sleeping off that afternoon’s drink. Laure and Eva are playing cards, and complaining about the other’s habits and supposed cheating.

Wulfric surveys all this, surveys how little of a reaction there is to his entrance. Eadwin has stood, the knights pause their game to mutter a cursory m’lord, and Everard has shifted suddenly closer to Margaret. His dog Blossom lifts her head, alert and watchful. Wulfwyn bows her head closer to her stitching. Mildred, who as usual is under the table, looks up to see why everything has gone quiet.

Margaret lifts her head from her book for only a moment, and looks back. She is reading one of Lady Anna’s old books, a discourse on marriage by Mother Julieta Dealuz, in particular her thoughts on the responsibilities husbands bear to their wives. A man should consider his relationship to his wife to be a reflection of his relationship with the Heavenly Mother. It is said that before He was slain, the Lord of Heaven was not above or below the Queen but always at Her side. So too a man should not consider himself to be above or below his wife, but her equal partner in all things. In this way he will please the Queen of Heaven, and such a marriage shall be always more harmonious than an unequal marriage.

Wulfric stalks through the middle of everyone and kicks Blossom so hard she yelps. Margaret snaps her book shut as Everard snatches up his dog. “Would it kill you not to act like an animal?”

The room goes completely still. Wulfric turns to look at her, she can almost see the thunderhead in his eyes. “What did you say?”

Aethelric sits up at the table, wild-eyed.

“What harm has the dog ever done except to annoy you?” Margaret asks, angry. She clutches the book to keep her hands from shaking. “You’re no better at minding your temper than a goat. It’s unbecoming.”

This, apparently, is the last straw for Wulfric. He seizes her arm, dragging her stumbling out of the chair.

“My lord—” Eadwin tries, and Sir Laure and Sir Eva are on their feet, blocking Wulfric’s path.

“Pardon, my lord,” Sir Eva says, “but I’m going to have to ask you to unhand the lady.”

“She is not your wife yet,” Sir Laure says, “and until her family arrives, she is in the care of the church.”

“She is in my house,” Wulfric snaps.

“My lord,” Laure says, with a smile as cold as ice, “I would hate to cause an incident.”

Margaret jerks her arm out of Wulfric’s grasp. “Beast,” she mutters.

Wulfric drives the back of his hand across her face, and stars dance in front of her eyes. Sir Eva takes her arms as Sir Laure steps between them and Wulfric, her knuckles white around the hilt of her dagger. Aethelric swears aloud.

“You had best learn to control your tongue, witch,” Wulfric spits as the knights take her out of the hall. The last thing Margaret hears before the door swings shut is Wulfric bellowing at Everard to take the damned dog somewhere else.

“That was unwise,” Laure mutters as they take her up to her chambers.

Margaret runs the tip of her tongue along her lip, feeling the sting of the new split. “Felt good, though.” Terrifying. But good.

Her fingers are clutched so tightly around the book that they ache.

#.

The man without a name

He’s staring discontentedly at his own reflection when Eadwin comes up. He keeps moving his hair—Margaret’s hair—to try and recreate how it would look if it were shorter, as he saw in the vision. Laure and Eva, having left their cards in the great hall, have been talking to each other in their own tongue, and if he concentrated he could probably understand them, but he’s lost in his thoughts.

Eadwin stands in the outer chamber, looking at him, and she—Margaret—thinks she should say something, but she doesn’t know what, and he—the one without a name—doesn’t want to.

“Why on earth did you provoke him?” Eadwin asks.

“He shouldn’t have kicked the dog,” he says flatly, turning away from the mirror because if he doesn’t, he will start to become Margaret again and he doesn’t want to let her back just yet. “Perhaps he should want to be rid of me.”

“Wulfric doesn’t let go,” Eadwin says. “He keeps or he destroys. If he let go, it would be a great deal easier to resolve things.”

He, the unnamed one, draws a breath through his nose. “If Aethelric had any backbone or principle, he’d shield the children.”

Eadwin lowers his voice. “I would not speak so of a man who wants you safely away from here almost as much as I do.”

He scoffs to think Aethelric gives a damn what happens to him, to Margaret.

“The day after I brought you here, Aethelric told me kindness would be chasing you out of Eagletop with a whip,” Eadwin says. “He loved Lady Anna as a sister, he took her death almost as hard as her children did. Now that you’ve had a taste of what Wulfric is like when his pride is injured, will you please avoid making any more cuts?”

He shrugs his shoulders. Margaret would make the assent, even if she didn’t want to.

Eadwin lets out an aggrieved sigh, drawing a hand down his face.

“I am tired of shrinking and hiding,” the unnamed man says quietly.

Eadwin considers him in silence. “There is no courage in baring your belly to an enemy’s sword,” he says. “I am just asking you to hold on for a few more days.”

He chews the inside of his lip, and finally, he nods. He wants to be away from here.

Eadwin steps closer, raises a hand halfway between them, as though he can’t quite bring himself to touch the other in front of the knights. “Are you alright?”

“It’s no worse than when one of my father’s hounds smacked his head into mine and I bit my lip open,” he says, tilting his head up to show Eadwin.

Eadwin sighs, pressing his palms together in front of his face. “I thought I was going to kill that man.”

“I would have liked to see it.” He reaches out to take Eadwin’s hand, since Eva and Laure already know. “You’re the one I ought to be scolding into controlling your temper.”

Eadwin gives him an irritated grimace, but it doesn’t last. Eadwin squeezes his hand. “Do I have to advise you to take dinner in your rooms?”

“My pride would prefer not to, but for the sake of my nerves, I will.” He holds up his hands, finally steady. “I was quivering like a leaf.”

Eadwin takes one hand, kisses his fingers. “Will you be alright? I intend to go see what sort of sermon I need to give Lord Wulfric.”

“Yes, I will be alright.” He wishes Eadwin could stay. “Do what you have to.”

He watches Eadwin go, and Sir Laure leans back in her seat, pulling her hands behind her head. “By the by, does he know about your apparent revelation?”

“He does.” He, the unnamed, sinks into a chair and lets out a breath. A hand falls to his middle. He had expected worse than that strike. It had felt good to say what he thought. He would have liked to throw the book at the back of Wulfric’s head, if that wouldn’t have risked it ending up in the fire.

When Margaret was a girl she had always been fiery, it had made her father furious. He thinks now, of course. It was only time that let us be beaten down, made afraid. Her father never even laid a hand on her.

He hopes that beating down doesn’t happen to Wulfwyn.

#.

Wulfric is in a rage. He has been pacing around the hall, ranting about Margaret for several minutes, and Eadwin has not tried to say anything because he wouldn’t be able to. Aethelric has made a few attempts, and been shouted over. Wulfric also has a number of things to say about the knights, which Eadwin hopes will leave his head as soon as he leaves this room because it is an impressive act of profaning and it is not something he desires to have lingering in the back of his mind when he next sees those women. These are not words he feels he will ever have need to know again.

“She’s coddling that boy, and for what?” Wulfric demands. Aethelric has his elbows on the table, massaging his temples with both hands. “He’s not her son. He’ll be a man soon enough, if he can ever become a man. To speak to me that way, in my own house—”

“Then don’t kick the fucking dog!” Aethelric shouts, his voice for a moment almost summoning the ghost of their father out of the grave. “Fiery angels, that’s all she asked you to do. But who would you be, if you couldn’t bully a nine year old child and a woman?”

Eadwin watches the brothers descend into a contest of noise for a few moments before he goes to the fire to pick up the iron poker and slams it down on the silver tray that had been left out from Aethelric’s drinking. It leaves a dent in the metal, but it means Wulfric finally falls silent.

“Are you done?” he asks, like he’s scolding boys at the abbey. At their silence, he points at Wulfric with the poker. “My lord, you sent me to find you a very particular kind of woman, which I did. If you have changed your mind, then I do not see how in good conscience I can reassure her that she should still marry you after that display. If you want another kind of wife, let this one go.”

“And what am I to tell her family?” Wulfric asks. “What am I to say to my peers?”

“I don’t think it will surprise anyone that a woman couldn’t abide being around you,” Aethelric says.

“My lord, you may tell them that you believe she is a witch for all I care,” Eadwin says, “but if you do not want her then do not marry her.”

It’s perhaps the first time in sixteen years that Eadwin’s seen Wulfric look truly angry at him. He’s spent sixteen years placating and choosing his silences and learning the vagaries of the creature that is Wulfric, this is the first time Eadwin has tried to tell him what to do.

Wulfric throws the chair at the end of a table halfway across the room. If the servants know what’s good for them they’re listening closely, to know what kind of distance to keep from their lord. “She’s not a witch,” Wulfric says, “what she is a bitch that’s been allowed to get too bold.”

Eadwin has to keep her away from him.

“You kick a bitch enough times and eventually she’ll bite first,” Aethelric says. “You think you’re the first one? Brother Eadwin already told us about her father. I imagine she’s had enough of men like you.”

Eadwin wishes very much that Aethelric would be silent, but this incident seems to have gotten under Aethelric’s skin in a way that nothing has for some time. “For fuck’s sake, Wulfric, when will it end? When will you be a big enough man you don’t have to make your wife and children smaller?”

“Be quiet!” Wulfric bellows.

“My lord Aethelric,” Eadwin says, in the most level voice he can manage. “I must ask you to leave us.” Please, he thinks. Before you say something we’ll both regret.

Aethelric’s face contorts for a few moments, and he sweeps his hand through the goblet on the table sending it clattering to the floor. A trickle of dark wine spills out onto the stone as he storms to the door, and slams it shut behind him.

“Arrogant child of a man,” Wulfric says. “He’s lucky he’s my brother.”

Eadwin lowers the point of the poker to the floor, but does not let it go. “My lord, I must again insist that if you do not want Lady Margaret for your wife then you must not marry her.”

“I have already come to an agreement with her brother. To renege now would be dishonorable.”

Eadwin half wishes Wulfric knew that the new Lord Henry only came to that agreement because he felt his sister had given him no choice. “My impression of the Becketts is that they care dearly for their sister, and they would rather have her back than have her in a marriage that is detestable to both of you. Better to break it off sooner. She is young, she may yet make other arrangements. You are not so old yourself, there is still time to find another.”

Wulfric shakes his head. “I will not have people say I was cowed by rumor and superstition, or that I was unmanned by a woman in a hunt.”

“So instead you will devote your misery to increasing hers,” Eadwin says, “and that of your maidservants, to boot. I understand Bramble will soon bless you with another bastard.”

Wulfric scowls at him. “You’ve grown to have too much of an ear for gossip, Brother.”

“When I am so tied to this house over my duties at the abbey, I have no choice,” Eadwin says. “If you feel my integrity as a Brother of the Moon has been compromised, it is because I have not lived a properly monastic life in over a decade. But I will tell you this, as your counsel: if there is any desire in you to align your actions with the will of Heaven, it is not in tormenting Lady Margaret.”

“So this, too, is my fault.”

Eadwin swallows a curse. “My lord,” he says, “what I mean is that in order to serve as I have, certain compromises have had to be made. It would be the same for any brother or sister counseling any lord or lady as I have counseled you. I must be aware of what is going on in your house.” And of course, he must hear that Wulfric has not denied that the poor girl is with child, which leads him to a number of conclusions about how long Bramble has been in Wulfric’s bed.

“My lord it will not matter how pious your wife is if you hate each other,” Eadwin says. “This disharmony is a warning from Heaven.” It is a desperate attempt, but he thinks it is not impossible.

“How pious can she be, a woman who hunts?” Wulfric asks.

It is always going to come back to that hunt, Eadwin thinks. That everyone saw Margaret return with enormous success that Wulfric did not have. “If you do not want her, my lord, then send her home.”

“No,” Wulfric says flatly. “I have made the agreement with her brother, and it is clear her line is good, even if her raising hasn’t been. I will not make that mistake.”

Eadwin still feels the weight of the iron poker in his hand and he thinks: I could beat this man to death. He would not lose any sleep over it. His father dead in the mud: drowned, with broken bones. “A woman is not a temperamental horse to be broken, my lord.”

“They have more in common than you might think,” Wulfric says. “I will not discuss this further. Good day, Brother.”

Eadwin’s hand tightens around the iron, but he sets it back in its hook and leaves with his temper reined in so tightly he expects something to snap. He is glad that Margaret is not alone.

He finds Aethelric just outside the walls, a bottle of what Eadwin is sure is a very expensive imported wine in his hands. “It didn’t work, did it?” Aethelric asks, taking a swig.

“No,” Eadwin says. “Of course it didn’t.”

Aethelric offers him the bottle, and Eadwin considers it a moment before he sighs and takes it.

“I’ll do what I can,” Aethelric mutters. “She only has what, a few days left before her brothers arrive?”

“Yes.”

“Do you suppose they’ll be of any help?”

“Not of the kind she wants.”

Aethelric laughs softly. “No, I suppose they’d sooner put her in a convent.” He sighs, bending forward to put his head on his arms, over his knees. “I know they can’t be right, those that say everything in the world functions according to some perfect plan from the Queen of Heaven, because what sort of perfect plan would make Wulfric the way that he is?”

“Those that argue that are often the counselors of kings,” Eadwin says. “Which is to say they’re even more compromised than I am.” He hands the bottle back to Aethelric. “I’ll leave you to waste your brother’s wine on your own.”

“Would that I could drink enough for an army,” Aethelric says, sitting up to take it. “I take it you’re leaving for the day.”

“I can only patiently handle his lordship for so long,” Eadwin says. “I will see you in the morning, when hopefully my prayers have softened my temper.”

“Not too much, I hope,” Aethelric says. “I thought you were going to bash his head in with that poker.” He says it like he wishes Eadwin had.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon VII.

Moon Mass

6.5k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Margaret

She’s wound tight as wire for days afterward. She tells Eadwin about the encounter when next they speak alone. He is both unhappy and unsurprised. “Aethelric made implications to me, but I had hoped he was only being a nuisance.”

They are careful. They keep their distance. Margaret avoids Wulfric’s temper as much as she can.

She counts out days in her head, when she expects that they will do the rites in Grenacre, when she expects that Harry and the others will be preparing to return to Eagletop.

The first day of the full moon comes, and Bramble prepares the bath for her. Margaret submits to a rough scrubbing from her head to her feet, leaving her feeling a little raw all over. She is dressed in simple linens, hardly more than a smock. Her breakfast is prepared, much lighter than what anyone else is eating. Wulfric says not a word to her. Afterward, she is escorted to the church to spend the rest of her day in prayer.

She does not see Eadwin during the day, though perhaps that is for the better. She prays and sings the hymns and eats with the others who have come to prepare for the mass—less than twenty people, altogether. The day is long, and it is a relief when night comes and they are taken out into the church garden, where they can see the moon just above the wall.

The brothers begin a low chant as the cups are poured and brought out. Eadwin had warned Margaret that the elixir was bitter, but it is worse than she thought, and she has to fight the instinct to gag and reject it. She swallows it all, and kneels in the garden, breathing and listening to the chant and fighting nausea. Heavenly Mother, she prays: show me what to do.

Heavenly Mother, I cannot lose him.

It feels as if she’s kneeling in that garden for an age, the moon climbing higher and nothing happening but the chanting of the brothers, the sounds of restless stirring around her.

And then all at once—it all falls away. The sound, first, and then the garden and the church. There is only the black night, the stars, and the silver disk of the moon. Margaret’s breath is too loud in her ears, her limbs are too heavy.

A silver owl glides out of the black on silent wings. One of its talons brushes the ground, and the owl transforms, stands over Margaret as a woman in the image of the statue in the Grenacre church, taller than any man or woman who has ever lived. The Queen of Heaven glows the color of the morning sun and Her hair moves faintly in a breeze Margaret cannot feel. Roses spring up around Her, vining, leafing, blooming, wilting and dying and vining again. She wears a feathered cloak.

Margaret stares, and cannot speak.

The Queen of Heaven bends, reaches down with a hand to lift Margaret’s chin. “My son,” She says, Her voice everywhere and nowhere, “why do you hide from what you are?”

Margaret doesn’t understand.

“Come,” the Queen says, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. The Queen reaches into the heavens and pulls down the moon as a silver mirror, turning it to face Margaret.

The reflection is a flickering one, like two flames becoming one and separating again. It takes time to parse, that one half of the image is her as she understands her own reflection. The other is—

A young man’s face stares back at her. He resembles, but most certainly is not one of her brothers. His face moves as her face does, in perfect harmony with Margaret’s reflection. The image shifts and this stranger disappears into Margaret’s reflection, then her image becomes him, and they are separated again. Two faces eerily alike.

“I don’t understand,” Margaret says, wanting to shrink away.

The Queen is standing behind Margaret, an immovable wall. She places Her hands on Margaret’s shoulders. Her reflection looms over Margaret’s. “You do.”

Margaret doesn’t want to understand. When she looks at this man with her eyes and her nose and her mouth, she feels the terrible stretch of a future she can’t predict and doesn’t know how to reach no matter how much she might long for it.

Tears burn in her eyes, but it does not spare her from the clarity of the image. This man, with his short cut hair and his easy posture, comfortable in his bearing, the good fit of his clothes—something is clawing at her chest from the inside, threatening to tear its way out. “This is impossible,” Margaret says.

“When you hold kernels of wheat in your hand, do you say it is impossible that this should become bread?” The Queen asks. “When you hold a child, do you say it is impossible that this should one day be an adult?”

“This is different.”

“Not so much as you believe it to be.” The Queen reaches past Margaret’s shoulder to point to the shifting nature of the reflection. “See here, how you are never fully separated.”

It is true that even when she can see herself standing beside this man, they overlap, as if fading into and out of each other. “The woman that you are now will not die if you let him come to be. But if you try to hold him in, to hide him in some secret place—” The image in the mirror changes, Margaret and the man locked in a violent struggle, neither able to gain an advantage over the other. “—it is the war in yourself that will consume you.”

Tears stream hot down Margaret’s cheeks. “I don’t want this,” she says. Has she not failed enough at being a woman? Surely she would fail just as much at being this.

“You do, or you would not fight it so.”

“Where did this come from?”

“He has always been with you,” the Queen says, stilling the image so it is only the man, looking back at Margaret. “He has lived under your skin for as long as you can remember. Perhaps he would be different, if you had ever been permitted to acknowledge him.”

“But if I become this,” Margaret says, “if I allow—this—” She cannot say him. “—if I allow this out, how can I know that he will still love me?” They are no longer speaking of the man in the mirror.

The Queen of Heaven’s laughter is low and soft and not an ounce of it is mocking. “My son, my son,” She murmurs, turning Margaret around as though she is light as a sheet of paper. “Do you think it is your dresses he loves? Your hair? I tell you it is not.” Her glow is overwhelming, and Margaret smells the rosewater and beeswax candles of Grenacre church.

“You have always been struggling with Me,” the Queen says, “because you have always been struggling with him that dwells inside you. Now, there is something else I must show you. Turn, and take his hand.”

Margaret turns as though her body is moving without her. The silver mirror is gone, now there is only the man who is and is not her, holding out his hand. Margaret sucks in a breath as if she is about to plunge underwater, and takes it.

It is as though she slides into his skin, melding and becoming one. There is a black stag standing before him, the black stag he shot down in the forest. Those are his arrows, from which come steady streams of red blood, flowing like rivers into the sea as they say the Lord of Heaven’s blood made the waters.

He reaches out to touch the stag’s nose. The stag’s eyes are changed, one is silvery and cool, the other gold and blazing. With a steady hand he reaches out and plucks the golden eye from the stag’s head, and swallows it whole.

A wolf howls, calling its brethren to the hunt. The edges of the stag blur and ripple, and the darkness pours out and swallows everything in a warm silence.

Margaret stares at the hands that are not his hands, and yet are. He floats through the darkness in a body that is and is not his, and the world begins to cool and become firm, and Margaret is back in the church garden, bent over with her forehead and both her hands on the cool grass, trembling. It takes her too long to recognize the strange sounds she hears as sobs, and to recognize that they are coming from her.

When she has the strength and clarity to pick herself up, to look around through the silvered moonlight, strong hands help her to her feet. The moon is well past the place where it hung when she was last on this earth, and she feels drained and hollowed.

The brothers carry her to the place where those who have received the moon mass must go to sleep and rest. They will watch over her if she should need them. They give her water to drink, and a bowl in case she should need to vomit. Margaret stretches out on the narrow bed and is relieved when she does not dream.

#.

She wakes in the early light of morning and stays still a long while, staring at the ceiling painted in deep blue and silver stars. She thinks of swallowing the golden eye, and begins to count days backwards in her head.

She counts them a second time. A third.

Her neck is stiff, and she pulls herself up, dry-mouthed and miserable. There are brothers moving through the room, checking on those who are beginning to stir and rise. Eadwin comes to her bedside with water and a rag to wash her face. “My lady,” he murmurs, “how are you feeling?”

She stares at him with burned eyes, and when she can find her voice she says, “I must speak with you as soon as possible. Alone.”

Eadwin hands her the water and rag. “Tend to your needs, and I will bring you something to eat. I will keep you company if you take it outside. Some fresh air after the mass will do you good.”

Margaret moves to the room set aside for the women, and is jarred to see her own reflection in the mirror. She had half expected to see the man from her vision. She fusses at her hair until it looks halfway decent, and when she emerges Eadwin has brought her a bowl. Oats, with no butter or cream, of course, but a touch of honey. A mug of hot cider. He takes her outside into the warm spring morning, and the sun is almost unbearably bright. Eadwin sits silent at her side while she eats, more ravenously hungry than she expected, and he does not ask what she wants to say to him.

Margaret scrapes the bowl clean and sets it aside, cradling the cup of her cooling cider in her hands. “I understand what people mean, now,” she says. “About it being difficult to speak of sacred things.” She does not think she can ever adequately explain to him what she saw and felt. “Something the Queen showed me made me start to… to think about the time that we have known each other.”

Eadwin is looking at her, trying to puzzle out what it is she’s going to say.

Margaret looks at him, feeling again that something is trying to rip its way out of her chest. “In the belly of my queen,” she murmurs, “I will be reborn.”

Eadwin stares at her for a moment before he seems to understand, and then it is as though she can see him counting backwards in his own mind. “How can you possibly know that already?” he whispers.

“Because I am as regular as the moon,” Margaret says, “and I am two weeks late.”

Eadwin lets out a breath, bending over his knees as if she knocked it out of him. He folds his hands before his mouth, staring off over the fields. He sits up again. “I told you we have a Brother of the Rose here,” he says. “He can help you—”

“Eadwin.”

He stops, and looks at her, and there is fear in his gaze. Margaret feels her eyes sting. “Eadwin, I can’t.” Not so she can just go and marry Wulfric and have him try to get a son on her.

Eadwin turns more fully toward her, putting his hands over hers. “Nor can you keep it if you mean to stay here,” he whispers.

“I know,” she says, the first concession she’ll make. She raises one of her hands to wipe at her eyes. “Would you come with me?” she asks.

“Where?”

“I don’t care,” she says. “Anywhere.”

Eadwin’s eyes meet hers, and he nods, squeezing her hands. “Yes.”

Margaret bites her lip a moment and draws up her courage. “And would you—would you come with me if I were not as I am now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw—” She struggles for words. “I do not think I am meant to be a woman,” she says, her voice terribly quiet and her heart pounding against her ribs like it might burst. “I think—I think I am meant to be a man, though I don’t know how.” It is the most frightening thing in the world to say it aloud, and say it to him.

Eadwin’s thumb strokes over her knuckles. “There is nothing in the world that would make me leave you behind.” He looks at her with a bittersweet smile. “I will go with you anywhere to get you away from this place, and see you safe and happy. Whatever that means.”

She wants to kiss him, desperately so, but she can’t. Not here. Eadwin squeezes her hands again and collects the empty bowl. “Will you be alright? I should speak to Father Algar.”

Margaret nods, thinking she ought to sit alone with her thoughts for a while.

“Do you still wish to go through the mass again tonight?”

She almost says no. She rubs an old scar on the back of her hand, from nicking herself with an arrowhead. “Yes,” she says. “There may be yet more I need to know.”

Eadwin nods and, after glancing around, he smooths her hair and bends to kiss her temple.

#.

Eadwin

He holds it as a mark of strength that he manages to make it to the kitchen and away before his hands start to shake. He ducks into the store room where candles and the church’s tools are kept, and sinks to the floor, covering his face with his hands.

It isn’t as though this has never happened before, but it was always dealt with quietly, so far as he knows. If he’s responsible for any other bastards, they’re likely already grown. There is, he thinks ruefully, a not insignificant chance that they would be older than Margaret.

He thinks about the way she looked at him, how the thing that frightened her wasn’t telling him that she’s pregnant. She was afraid of telling him the other thing more than she was afraid of coming to his room at the inn that night, more than she is afraid of Wulfric or of the consequences of their being discovered.

It is so soon. He supposes it’s not impossible that she could lie to him, he has seen how smoothly she does it, how meaning and implication dance on strings for her. She didn’t say the words directly, only laid them out to be interpreted. He supposes also that it doesn’t matter to him if she it is a lie. He supposes that he would rather believe her.

He sits in the store room too long, he’s seen there by one of the younger brothers, and shortly afterward Father Algar appears, closing the door. “What’s happened?”

Eadwin looks up. “She’s with child.” It feels dangerous to say it aloud, even here.

Algar’s mouth presses into a thin line, but he says nothing, waiting.

“She wants to leave,” Eadwin says, “but only if I go with her.”

“And?”

“I promised her I would.” He lets his head fall back against the wall. “I didn’t even think twice about it.” He’s been at this abbey for thirty-two years.

He wants her safe. He wants her happy.

Algar sighs. Nods. “It’s for the better, this way. When will you go?”

“I don’t know. I have to talk to her first.”

“You should marry elsewhere.”

Eadwin nods, though he has no idea if Margaret wants to marry him, after what she told him. “In a Rose church, I think,” he says. “She might prefer that.”

“Is she expecting you to return to her soon?”

“Whether or not she is, I should get up.” Eadwin steadies a hand on a crate, pulls himself up with a grunt. He scrubs his face with both hands, thinking: what can I do, if not this? He’s too old for the sort of work he acquired as a young man, when all he had to be able to do was move crates or shovel horse shit. He can read and write now, which he couldn’t before. His sums are adequate.

He will find the work. He has to.

Margaret has come back inside by the time he finds her again, to eat a little more. She looks a bit better, though he’s still worried about her doing a second mass in as many days. He bends to mutter in her ear, careful not to touch her. “When you’re finished, tell Father Algar you want to speak to him.”

She nods, reaching for her cider.

Eadwin makes himself busy in Algar’s office, the kind of tedious work appropriate for a secretary, which he hasn’t been since Eberhard passed. He drops it all the moment Father Algar brings her inside. Eadwin takes Margaret’s hands, draws her back to a work desk somewhat out of the way where they might speak quietly. She seems anxious, so he doesn’t let go of her hands.

“It would be better,” he says, “to leave sooner.” He would leave now, if she wished it.

Margaret is quiet for a moment that feels like an age. “I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye to my brothers.”

Calculating out in his head, it will be at least a fortnight before they arrive at the soonest, and a sister’s wedding is nothing to hurry for. “And if Lord Henry decides he will not let you leave?” He has already settled her dowry, he may not take well to his sister who fought him so fiercely for this marriage changing her mind, particularly for this reason.

Margaret closes her eyes, her hands tightening in his his. “I can escape from Grenacre. Or from a convent.” She is set on this point, and will not be moved.

“I thought we might go to—”

“Wait,” Algar says abruptly, rising. “Let me not hear this. If it is suspected I had any knowledge of this, I would prefer not to know where you have gone. Better, in fact, that I hear you plan none of this at all.”

Eadwin thinks again that he should never have become so embedded in the lord’s house. It is not right that his abbot should have to keep his secrets, should choose to forgo knowledge of his activities to protect the abbey. None of this, he thinks, is right—that to escape a marriage she no longer wants Margaret will have to abandon her family and society, to slip into common life and anonymity in the wake of disgrace. It is not as though it will be difficult for anyone to guess the reason, when he disappears with her. Lady Margaret who hunted the black stag, they say she ran away with the monk who taught Lord Wulfric’s children their prayers. It will be a proper scandal. Wulfric will want blood for it, and Eadwin doesn’t imagine that young Henry will feel any kinder.

It will be the end of any good relations between the family and this church, until Wulfric dies and perhaps after. The fact that Father Algar will claim ignorance and formally eject Eadwin from the Order will be of no consolation.

Father Algar steps out the outer door of his office, into the garden. He walks out to pray, where he will not be able to hear them talking. Eadwin wonders again if they were ever something akin to friends.

“I thought we might go to my family,” he says, “at least until we can find a more sure footing for ourselves.” Most of his brothers don’t know where he came from. The place recorded in the earliest records of his time at the abbey was only the last city he had come from, not the village he was born in.

Margaret nods. “I should like to have a family still,” she murmurs, subdued.

Eadwin gazes at her, her eyes turned toward their hands. “When I am relieved of my vows,” he says, “would you marry me?” He would like them to be joined in the Queen of Heaven’s eyes, would like their child to something better than a bastard.

Margaret’s eyes flick up, surprised. “Even if I became… what we have already discussed?”

“Yes,” he says. “It need not be for anyone but us. I will call you by any name you like, and if you would have me then I would tie myself properly to you—and to them.” He brushes his fingertips over her middle. It seems almost impossible to think there should be anything there, but there is possibility, and in that possibility he sees again the course of a new life unfolding before him, the way it did after he first saw the Heavenly Mother face to face.

Margaret still seems uncertain, afraid.

“I have loved other men,” he says, thinking again of Charlie Rees whose ghost is always just around the corner. “It’s only that I did not know you for one, at first.” Eadwin recognizes now what those flickering shifts in Margaret’s posture must have been.

For a moment, her—his lips curve upward. “How can I blame you for that if I was hiding it from myself?” She sits a little straighter, letting out a slow breath. “I have a great deal to think about,” she says softly. Her grey eyes meet his. “But I have thought for some time that if you were to be my husband I would not ask Heaven for anything else.” She smiles, bittersweet. “I only wish it needn’t come about so messily.”

“In my experience, that is the only way life comes about.” Eadwin lifts her hands to kiss her fingers. “There is a Rose church, between here and my home, if you would prefer—”

“I don’t care where it is,” Margaret says. “We could do it at one of those shrines on the road where they don’t even have a priest. All I want is you.”

Eadwin finds he can’t speak for a moment. He lets out a breath, and because he does not know when next they will be alone he draws her into an embrace, wrapping his arms around her. Margaret tucks her head under his chin, curling into him. Her hand shifts down to her belly. “I think it will be a daughter,” she murmurs.

Eadwin doesn’t ask why. If she saw it during the mass, then it is probably so.

They talk for a time about how they can get away, how they might get horses. Father Algar returns from the garden and says, “Lady Margaret, I am sorry, but if you mean to remain with us for a second night, the prayers will soon begin.” He looks at them both, perhaps trying to gauge how things are going by their faces.

Margaret stands with a nod, collecting herself. “Thank you, Father.” It isn’t clear whether she’s thanking him for letting her know, or for this time they can speak alone.

Algar inclines his head with a slight bow, and they must go about their work, must act as though everything is as it should be. Eadwin goes to the kitchen as he did the day before, to aid in the making of the elixir. There are so many requirements one must meet before one is taught how to make it. Eadwin had been a brother for near twenty years before he was trusted enough to learn.

On the occasion that someone like him leaves or is cast out of the Order, there is always whispering about compromising the secret that was given them by Saint Luce. No thought is ever given to how it requires an entire abbey to cultivate all the necessary ingredients, with their particular needs, or how many participants are needed for the ritual. The recipe is found easily enough, if one knows where to look—but to know what one needs to do is not the same as having the capability.

He grinds the herbs in the pestle and thinks of the first day he saw Margaret, how easily they understood each other without speaking a word as he persuaded her father to let her go.

He should have known, he thinks. He should have known it would weave this way.

#.

Margaret

Margaret

She prays to Saint Luce to light her way, to set forward some clear path for her. She prays to the Mother: make me certain, make me brave. It does frighten her a bit to imagine doing this again, but it frightens her more to imagine there might be something she doesn’t yet know about herself that she still needs to understand.

She is glad she doesn’t see much of her own reflection. She thinks of the games she played with her brothers when they were children. She thinks of Eadwin asking her what she wants to be.

A knight. A falcon. A hunter.

She prays, and night falls. The moon rises, and Margaret thinks how strange: that the stories she knows most often name the moon as the Queen’s son, when he swells, shrinks, and vanishes in the same number of days as a woman’s cycle, and she thinks of the man who has no name who lives inside her skin. Further south, she has heard they name the moon a daughter, but she has always known him this way. She kneels in the grass, and it is easier to drink the elixir this time. She waits, and breathes.

It comes gradually this time, and Margaret is less aware of it except as a fading of sound, until she opens her eyes and she is standing in the woods at Grenacre on a bright summer afternoon. She looks at her hands—his hands. He lets out a breath, and it sounds like relief.

A sound. He turns, and he knows this woman’s face, because it has hung on the wall of his father’s house as long as he can remember. The elder Margaret Beckett smiles. “You look well.”

He looks around. “This can’t be Paradise.” He has heard stories of people speaking to the dead in moon mass before, but he refuses to believe Paradise looks like this.

“No,” his mother says, “but I am not a restless ghost, you needn’t fear. This is only a meeting place.”

She is taller than he thought she would be, his mother. Not that she is tall, only that in his imagining she was a waif, a wraith, because his father always accused him of making too much of himself. He can look his mother in the eyes. Her hair, a pale sandy brown, is loose over her shoulders. Her face is dotted with freckles, her eyes are grey. His mother steps forward, puts her hand on his face. “I knew all of my children would grow up handsome.”

He thinks about asking: was my father always that way? But he doesn’t think the answer will give him any consolation. Instead he asks, “Is my father in Paradise?”

“He is on his way,” she says. “He isn’t ready, yet. It is a longer journey for some.” She lowers her hand from his face. “I am sorry that things have been so difficult for you.”

He says, “I don’t know why I’m seeing you. I never knew you.”

“It seems to me that you don’t know yourself, either.” His mother smiles at him again. “I know you were only protecting yourself, but there comes a time my darling when every shield must break.”

There are wolves howling in the trees. There are no more wolves in Grenacre, haven’t been in over century. No, he thinks, not wolves. One wolf.

He looks again, and his mother is not there. He is alone in the woods and the wolf has gone quiet, which is worse than the howling. He has nothing: no bow, no dagger.

Only his hands.

When he looks up, he is in the dark, and looking back at him is Margaret, the younger Margaret, who is and is not him. She already feels distant.

She holds out her hand. “Just a while longer,” she says. “We’ll do it together.”

He takes her hand. Flames, flickering into one. She is Margaret again, and she lays a hand over her heart, letting out a breath. She is still in the dark, but they are breathing together, her and the man without a name.

A gentle light, and Saint Luce with her lantern stands on a path, the moon a halo behind her head. “Are you seeking Her?” she asks, with a hand pointed to Heaven.

“I am seeking myself,” Margaret answers.

Saint Luce nods. “You cannot reach the end if you have no place to begin from. Will you come? The road is long.”

“Come where?”

“The road is an end unto itself.”

“I will come.” Margaret steps onto the path behind the saint, and the man without a name is looking out from her eyes, and they flicker apart, and together again.

#.

Eadwin

The morning after the second night Margaret rises vomiting and with a terrible headache, which is unsurprising. It is no easy thing to go through two moon masses in as many nights, though the second did not see her going to bed in tears. He sees that she drinks plenty of water and has a hearty meal before Wulfric’s servants come to collect her. He tells her no one will expect her to do anything but keep to her rooms and rest.

It is time for him to spend his own day in preparation. He expects it to be one of the last he will ever have, and it is a strange sensation.

It was told to him once that seeing and speaking to the Heavenly Mother could never impart wisdom to a dedicated fool, and it was as likely to turn a man mad as it was to help him see clearly. He wonders which he is, fool or madman, after all these years. He does not credit himself to be wise, and he is certain he is not seeing clearly.

No one in the Order takes it to be a sign of piety to engage in the moon mass with any frequency. They rightly see it as desperation, and he is desperate. It has been years—perhaps even decades—since his prayers were so fragmented and anxious.

No matter how many times he has done this, it has never become less disorienting when the world falls away. It is like water this time, like floating in a calm lake. The sun and the moon ride out in their chariots, silent horses straining at their bits, light falling from them in cascades.

“My son, why are you here?”

He cannot see Her, only feel Her presence. “You know why.”

Soft laughter. “Do you?”

He drifts, watching as the sun and moon go round and round again. “I am afraid.”

“Of course you are.”

“Everything is at stake.”

“You have come through such things before.”

“When it was only me,” he says. “Now it is both of us, and a child.”

Silence. He has the sense that She is waiting for him to get to the heart of it on his own.

“If something happens to her because of me—”

“She has made her decisions and will continue to make them. You cannot control that, nor take responsibility for it.”

No. No, Margaret is not someone who can be controlled. Not by him, certainly.

“I want her safe.”

“She wants you alive.”

A great rushing sound, and Eadwin finds himself standing before the altar in the church, but the statue has come to life, and the Queen of Heaven holds Sun and Moon in Her arms. Her tender smile is replaced by a stern gaze. “You are so lost in your fears for her you have forgotten the danger presented to you.”

“It does not matter what happens to me.”

“And where will she go, without you? To your family, who she does not know and who do not know her?”

Eadwin says nothing, has nothing to say.

“You know what she will do,” the Queen says. “You have seen her try it once before.”

He feels the blood soaking warm through his habit as though it is fresh. He grasps the fabric, his hand finds it dry.

“Look at me.”

He does, he has no choice.

“I know what you have said to each other,” She says, “but she is not as I am and you are not as My lord was. From your death will be only the things that come of My creation, the rot and the worm and the grave mushroom. So while you are granted life, you must live. You swore yourself to be My servant, and so you must not squander what I have given you. I knew you even when your grandmother was in her mother’s womb, and I know the descendants of that child which is coming to be.”

“I will soon be freed from my vows whether I wish to be or not.”

“You will be freed from your earthly obligations, yes,” She says, “but vows to Me are not so easily relieved. Come.” She gestures to him to come forward, and his feet move at Her command. Her great hand cups his chin, and for a moment he is twenty years old again, seeing for the first time the Mother of the World, the Maker of All Things. “My son,” She says, not unkind, “have I not always been here for you, when you needed Me?”

“My Queen will forgive me if I acknowledge that Her watchful eye is not the same thing as safety from other men.”

“I will forgive that,” She says, amused. “But you would not come seeking Me if you did not trust Me. You would not have come seeking Me for all these years. So trust Me now: if the two of you are to be joined in life, you must now be joined in purpose. You will leave and live together, or not at all.”

“I do not know the way forward.”

“You will find it. Though you may sometimes feel you are grasping in the dark, you will find it.” She smiles and releases him, leaning back upon Her seat. Sun and Moon gaze at him in silence, and their light begins to grow brighter, filling the space, erasing the shadows. “Go now,” the Queen of Heaven commands. “You will be needed in the morning.”

#.

The air warns of a thunderstorm all morning. All feels taut and drawn, and Eadwin cannot bear to sit still. He is quick about getting to the castle, because he is anxious about not having seen Margaret since the morning before.

He is told she is still in her private chambers, feeling poorly, though when he asks if he can speak to her she comes to the outer chamber readily enough. “I thought I would make use of the excuse to have a few more hours to myself,” she says with an embarrassed smile. The maidservant Bramble is doing her mending in the corner. “Otherwise I’m quite alright. Did you receive the mass yourself?”

“I did,” he says. “It was… perhaps not what I wanted, but what I needed.” He wishes he could speak to her alone, but he is glad to see her well.

The tanned stag hide is hung on her wall, a strange black shape against the wood. She sees him looking. “It’s marvelously done, isn’t it?” she asks, sounding proud. “It’s astonishing how small the arrow wounds are.” She goes to the wall, runs a hand over the hide as she might stroke a fine piece of silk. “I’m having the antlers mounted, I told the man I would skin and hang him if he damaged the velvet.” Bramble makes a sound, she has pricked herself with the needle. Eadwin wonders if Wulfric is still calling her to his bed. He wonders if Margaret knows.

“I’ve brought you a gift from Father Algar,” Eadwin says. It is of course not at all from the father. “In honor of your first moon mass.”

Margaret takes the parcel and opens it with care, letting the paper conceal the better part of teh contents from Bramble’s inquiring gaze. It is Eadwin’s book of song and prayer, and the moonstone amulet. The first is supposed to belong to the abbey, and he would lose it when released from his vow. It is filled with three decades of notes, stray thoughts on the structure and nature of prayer, on the precise wordings of the songs and their meaning, and if he runs the risk of sacrificing his personal papers to the need to pack lightly and travel swiftly he will not lose this. The second item he has long counted with a faint degree of superstition to be lucky, and he wants her to have it, at least until they are away from Eagletop.

“Thank you,” Margaret says, closing the paper over both. “Tell Father Algar I am looking forward to my next.”

Eadwin inclines his head. “I will be happy to, my lady.”

He leaves her to collect the children for their lessons, and as he passes the great windows along the south wall he can see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. It will be the kind of storm people say there are angels in, the wind ripping the tops out of trees and the lightning splitting the heavens.

He stands to watch the clouds for a moment, and thinks of his father dead in the Penbreak mud, of Lord Henry the elder working himself into such a rage that his son says his heart must have burst. He thinks of Wulfric’s injured pride, of Margaret’s refusal to soothe it.

Yes, he thinks, watching the clouds—this storm is going to break over Eagletop like the Killing Angel’s own sword.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon VI.

The Black Stag

6.3k | kofi | ao3 | tag CW: animal death & butchering

Margaret

It is harder with her brothers there. She hardly speaks to Eadwin for three days, because there is always someone around. She begins to bring the children to their lessons, just so she can say good morning.

There is so much fuss. Fabric to choose for her wedding clothes, does she want a special blessing before or during the wedding because a Rose priest can be sent for, what of the foods, what of, what of, what of. It is exhausting, and she must try to be graceful through it all. The date of the wedding is pushed back so that her brothers may be in attendance—with their father’s fickle temper no longer a concern, Wulfric is eager for everything to seem to be done properly. Margaret supposes this ought to be a relief, but she feels it is only delaying the inevitable.

Worse, Everard has begun to shadow her like a duckling. She feels terribly sorry for him, but she fears if she can’t shake him off when she’s only doing ordinary things, people will notice if she only manages to get rid of him when she wants to see Eadwin. She spends an inordinate amount of her time devising ways to keep Everard busy that won’t make him feel unwanted, and won’t have Wulfric accuse her of turning his son into an errand boy. “Will you teach Blossom to leap through a hoop? I think it would be wonderful if she could.”

When she has a spare moment, and so long as it is not raining, she makes a point of walking alone in the garden, even and perhaps especially if Eadwin is not to be found. It has to be ordinary, she thinks. It has to be usual.

It is the last day her brothers before her brothers are to return to Grenacre to perform the rites over their father’s grave that Aethelric declares they must go on a hunt, that he must see if it is true that Margaret is as much a hunter as Harry and Marcus confirm that she is. Wulfric seems annoyed at this, but he agrees they should go hunting. Margaret can’t decide if it’s to quiet his brother or to take her measure.

She’s given her pick of bows, though they try to hand her a light one first, one that’s more suited for a lady’s target practice than properly hunting. Margaret selects one of good ash wood, testing its draw. Everyone always underestimates the strength of her arms and back, even her brothers who started teaching her to shoot when she was ten. “This is the one,” she says, and begins to inspect the arrows. She’s choosy, and she can sense Wulfric growing impatient with her, but she means to prove herself. He may not give her another opportunity.

When she has her quiver, there is the matter of the horse. Marcus lends her his, because it’s a gelding she’s familiar with. She strokes the gelding’s neck, murmuring to him. “We’ll have a good hunt today, won’t we, Windhawk?” She declines the offer of a hound, she finds them to be unnecessary.

Aethelric determines that they should split into parties. One with Wulfric and her brothers, the other with Aethelric and herself. “All due respect,” Harry says swiftly, “someone else should go with you as well.” Margaret has to stifle a scoff. As if her virtue has anything to fear from Aethelric.

This is how she and Aethelric find themselves accompanied not only by Brother Eadwin, but by Everard. Margaret suspects this is Wulfric punishing his son, or trying to force him into the son he wants, because Everard shows absolutely no enthusiasm for the hunt and is too young to be there at all. He rides with Eadwin, since Eadwin is the only one who won’t be carrying a weapon. Aethelric has a spear in case they encounter any boar, though he doesn’t expect to. Otherwise the hunt is Margaret’s, and she means to take a stag.

Wulfric’s party rides out to the west of the forest, and Margaret’s to the east. There is a drizzle, but Margaret is wearing oilskin, and the rain will dampen their scent and sound. This forest is unfamiliar to her, but she knows what signs to look for: the narrow path through the brush, the nibbled edges of green ferns. Hoof prints in the mud, those faded and those still sharp.

Everard is restless and bored, and has to be hushed by Eadwin several times. Margaret is surprised at how quiet Aethelric is, and this is also the most sober she’s yet seen him. His eyes scan the brush, keeping watch. These woods are thick with game, he said before they set out. They’re guaranteed to sight something. Margaret thinks it’s foolish to expect guarantees of the forest.

The smell of cold wet rot is thick in the trees, the forest whispers with dripping water and the burbling of full streams. They see a few small does, and one yearling stag not worth taking.

Hunting is a patient game, but even Margaret is beginning to grow frustrated (and not a little hungry) when the brush stirs on the other side of the brook and she draws a hand up sharp to signal the others to be still and silent. She pulls an arrow from her quiver, not drawing just yet, but watching.

The stag, when his head appears into view, stops her breath in her throat.

He’s an old buck, the crown of his antlers spreads wide enough to hold Wulfwyn. But it’s his hide—black as rich earth, almost invisible against the trees—that marks him as something truly special. His antlers are still in their velvet, as black as the rest of him.

Margaret’s gaze flicks out the corner of her eye, just to confirm that Eadwin is still there in the saddle, that he hasn’t been somehow transformed. She raises her bow, tracing the line of the neck to where the shoulder should be, and the heart. Just another step or two, she thinks. The buck hasn’t seen them, his head is turned toward the trees, nibbling on the long pale lichens that drape from the branches like a woman’s hair and trail against his antlers. He takes one step, and then another.

Margaret lets fly her arrow.

It strikes true, buried almost to the fletching. The stag bowls over with astonishing silence, except for the weight of his body crashing in the ferns. It takes more than one arrow to bring down a buck like that, though, and with a grunt he’s up again and fleeing and Margaret digs her heels into the flanks of her horse, caring not for whether the others can keep up with her.

Aethelric gives a shout, but Margaret’s gaze is fastened on the stag. He’s trying to climb a slope, but he turns to the north and Margaret is ready. This arrow catches his throat, but must miss the important parts because the stag keeps going. Windhawk has done this before, he pursues with only a little urging. All she must do is be there when the stag has run himself to exhaustion, when he has bled enough he can go no further.

The stag thunders up along a stream and finds himself pinned against the rocky face where it comes down in a thin waterfall, too high and steep to be climbed. He turns, heaving breath steaming on the air, arrow shafts protruding from his side and throat, and rears, lowering his head as if to charge.

Margaret buries an arrow in his chest.

The stag drops heavy, his head held at an angle by his antlers. Even now, he isn’t dead—and that he can’t stand doesn’t mean he can’t thrash.

Margaret is getting out of the saddle as Aethelric catches up to her. “Mother in Heaven,” he breathes, staring at the buck.

Margaret ignores him, drawing her dagger from her sleeve. She approaches the stag carefully, murmuring soothingly under her breath. “It is always a sorrow to take a life such as yours,” she murmurs, the stag’s wild eyes tracking her as she approaches, his breath rapid and desperate. “A creature like you ought to live forever, but I am glad you fell for me.” She puts a firm hand to his antlers, and bends to plunge her knife into his throat, to bleed him and let him finally die. “Tell those in Paradise what a magnificent beast you were,” she murmurs.

The light goes from the stag’s eyes as his breath rattles and ceases, and Margaret pulls them shut. It is bad luck to let the dead gaze upon you, even if it is an animal.

She looks up at Aethelric, watching her. “He’s big,” she says, “will you help me get him on the horse?”

“I’ve never seen one like this,” Aethelric says, dismounting. “Not once, and yet—look at him, he must have been here for years.”

Yes, Margaret thinks, and he leapt into view for me.

They find Eadwin and Everard on their way back, and Everard seems to have been crying. Aethelric sighs and gets out of the saddle again, holding out his arms to his nephew. “Come on, now, let’s wash your face before your father sees you.”

Eadwin looks at the stag, and then to Margaret. She smiles, and lets out a breath as the rain begins to fade.

The sun is beginning to sink when they return to the castle. Wulfric and her brothers are back already, with a red doe of middling size. “We wondered if you’d gotten lost—” Marcus starts, and then he sees the stag. “By the Slain Lord,” he says. They all stand to look at it.

Aethelric launches into the story, talking about how Margaret rode after the stag like she would chase it to Paradise and back. He tells it rather more dramatically than she would, but it spares her having to say much as she has servants hang the stag for her so it can be skinned. “Be careful of his head,” she says, “I don’t want the velvet disturbed.”

“Margaret,” Harry says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s bloody work, let someone else dress it.”

Her brow furrows. She’s always dressed her own kills before. Then she thinks—he means this for Wulfric’s benefit. If she surrenders her prize now, she’ll never have them again. And more, she needs Wulfric to know she is just as accomplished with a knife as a bow.

“It’s my kill,” she says, “I’ll do the work.” She takes the knives and a butcher’s apron—too long for her, but it will protect her riding dress from the worst of it. First, to remove the arrows, then draw a cut up the middle, careful not to puncture the gut. It’s bloody work, and it keeps her busy so she need not lament that she cannot speak to Eadwin. The bony legs and some organs will go to the hounds, other organs to the kitchen. The intestines will be washed and made into sausage casings, the bladder a water skin. She sets aside the heart and says, “Don’t touch that, it’s mine.”

It’s bloody work, and Margaret thinks of Eadwin saying his hands were as at home in the guts of an animal as on a desk. She looks at her hands, covered in blood and membrane and bits of fat, and thinks they are as at home here as they are on his skin.

The hide will be tanned with the hair and returned to her. “Can we preserve the velvet on the antlers, do you think?” she asks Marcus.

“With salt, maybe,” he says. “It might not look like much, though.”

“I’d like to try.”

She keeps herself busy enough that she doesn’t notice Eadwin approaching until he’s standing there. Marcus has wandered off, and there’s only the servants who are helping her. “You do fine work,” Eadwin says, “you’ve a steady hand.” He glances back across the yard, and lowers his voice. “Lord Wulfric is steaming.”

“I suppose he killed the doe?” she asks, finally stripping away the last of the hide.

“He did,” Eadwin says. “If you had done similar or worse, he could have told Everard even his step-mother is bolder than him. But you came back with with this, and he can’t say anything.”

Because I’ve shown him up, Margaret thinks, and he can’t abide that. She carefully rubs an itch on her cheek with a forearm. “You should have seen him at the last,” she says, nodding at the lolling head of the stag. “An arrow in his heart and one through his neck, and he still wanted to fight me when I backed him into a corner. Old as he is, he should have sired plenty of fawns in those woods. I hope some take after him.”

Eadwin smiles faintly. “There’s been no rumor him, some would take it as a sign that you found and felled him your first time out in the forest.”

“I take it as a different kind of sign.” She lays aside her dagger. “Will you help me with his head? I’ll need a saw, for the antlers.”

Everyone always underestimates the strength of her arms. They underestimate her stubbornness, too. It’s difficult to take them off without damaging the velvet, but she manages it and sends one of the servants to get her a box and a bag of salt. She strokes the nose of the stag, and sighs. “What a beautiful thing. I might not have taken him, if he were young. I wouldn’t have had the heart.”

She washes her hands and the knives in a bucket of water, and picks up the heart from the butcher table.

“What are you going to do with that?” Eadwin asks.

“What else? Eat it.”

She has Everard come to sit with her while she roasts the heart. This is the most she knows how to cook for herself, roasting something she’s just killed. She shows Everard how to skewer it, turn it over the fire. How to know when it’s ready. Carefully, she cuts away a section and hands it to him. Let Wulfric steam, if he wants his son to be brave it’s better to give him a taste for heart.

#.

Eadwin

Margaret’s head is a little higher, her shoulders pulled back a little further after the hunt. She sits at the fire with Everard, sharing the heart of the stag with him and Wulfwyn when she comes out to see what’s going on. Her hair is escaping its net after the chase, but she makes no move to fix it. She cuts steaming bits of meat with her dagger and eats them with her fingers.

She’s smiling, but she’s not unaware. Her eyes track Wulfric as he stalks about the yard, keeping him always in her sight. She’s not provoking him, not quite—she’s just choosing to put on a show of not noticing his behavior. Her brothers are watching closely. Aethelric has started to drink.

He has to speak to her as soon as her brothers leave. He has to try and convince her not to go through with this marriage. He thinks: if I let her marry Wulfric she will die. Whether it will be by Wulfric’s hand or her own, he doesn’t want to speculate.

Father Algar has been pressing him, but he can’t express enough how she’s never alone, and they have been trying to be careful. She comes to mass every night, these last few evenings attended only by a maidservant as her chaperone, still unable to slip away for a private word.

By dinner, the story of Lady Margaret’s black stag has spread all over the castle. Aethelric, growing progressively drunker, recounts it a little more dramatically each time, until he would have it that she raced along a cliff’s edge to bring it down, and the stag only just missed goring her and the gelding. Wulfric finally loses his temper and shouts at Aethelric to be silent, and Margaret gives him a cool look over her goblet of wine.

Aethelric grins, swaying on his feet and staggering back a little. “Why, brother?” he asks too loudly. “Do you have any grand stories to recount about that little yearling doe? Good thing she was so young, or you might have orphaned a fawn.”

Wulfric starts to his feet but Margaret reaches out with a hand on his arm, like she’s taking the collar of a hound. “My lord,” she says, “pay no heed to your brother. He is drunk and foolish.”

Her face is a mask, but Eadwin recognizes clearly in her eyes the shine of contempt and hate she held for her father. Wulfric sits, and Margaret draws her hand away.

Her face is a mask and her tone plenty cool, but Eadwin recognizes in her eyes the shine of contempt she held for her father. Wulfric sits, and Margaret draws her hand away.

Aethelric never did know when to stop. “Yes, I am drunk,” he says, “but that buck was bigger than you, my lady, as our cooks can attest. How was his heart? I’ve never seen a woman cut a heart out of a living thing and roast it herself. You looked like a proper heathen, for all that I know you say your prayers every morning and night.”

Margaret smiles thinly. “It was bloody.”

Servants whisper. They whisper especially when it seems the new lady has unmanned her husband to be. It’s a strange feeling to hear them whisper about Wulfric in this way, when no one ever would have before. They hadn’t had much settled opinion on Margaret previous to this—now he hears a cleanly divided line between those who take it as a good omen that the new lady is adept and bold enough to bring down such a beast, and those who take it as a bad sign of her character. If she’s too like a young lord in this regard, in what other ways might she be too like a man?

He has to speak to her.

When he leaves for the church he has already decided how he means to do it. He speaks to Father Algar, who speaks to one of the boys. After mass, ask Lady Margaret if she will speak to the father. It is the only means of parting her from her chaperone without arousing suspicion. All he has to do is be there before anyone is paying attention to who goes in and out of the office. Less than ideal that Father Algar will be there to witness everything, but he has had worse humiliations.

Candles, hymns, prayers. The boy goes forward as Margaret rises from her seat, speaking softly. Eadwin turns back toward Father Algar’s office.

She comes in with Father Algar and when she sees him the slight crease in her brow deepens. “I thought it must be you,” she says, “but why—?” She looks at Algar, and back to him.

Eadwin comes forward to take her hands. “I have to ask you not to marry Wulfric.”

Confusion, and then annoyance. “What would you have me do?”

“Take the veil,” he says. “Anywhere that the church has a holding, anywhere in the world, I will get you there, but please—you cannot stay here.”

She stares at him, and Eadwin does not see her hand rise before it strikes his face in a stinging slap. It has been some time since anyone struck him like that. “If you wanted to be rid of me you could have done it before you brought me here,” she hisses. “You wretched coward—”

“Margaret,” he says, tightening a hand on her wrist. “If you marry him he will chip away at you little by little, he will do whatever he thinks is necessary to make you small and obedient, and it will never be enough for his pride and it will be my fault for bringing you here. If he strikes you, then it may as well come from my hand and I cannot live with that.”

A myriad of feelings are open on Margaret’s face, and her control over herself that she’s displayed so admirably these past few days is starting to slip. “No,” she says. “No, I’m not fucking leaving.”

Algar winces.

“Margaret—”

“I came to you because it gave me a choice,” Margaret says, “because I trusted you, and now you want to send me away to saints only know where because you’re frightened of what that pathetic excuse for a man will do to me?”

“I am afraid he will kill you!” Lady Anna was always dutiful, always quiet even when she was protecting her children. He cannot envision Margaret doing that for long before her temper gets the better of her.

Margaret is stubborn. Margaret is the kind of woman who chases after wild old stags and releases the reins while her horse is still at a gallop. Margaret will cut out and roast the heart of her own kills. Margaret wishes she had killed her father.

Her face hardens into an expression of contempt. She shoves him back, forcing him to release her hands. “Where is the man who wrote that he would give his life to me? Because I’m not sure I believe it was you.”

Eadwin wishes he didn’t see Algar’s brows rising.

“You mean to send me away, and do what? Stay here, attending to the wishes of that man, watching him chip away at his own children, and you’ll bring some other woman you don’t care for as much to be his bride? Let her take the fists you think I can’t survive? And I suppose you’ll fill your lonely nights with someone else, while I wither away in a convent where you don’t have to see it happen.” Her face is flushed red with anger. “After all, you’re the one with the reputation.”

For the first time in a long time, Eadwin truly does not know what to say.

Margaret draws in a breath, lets it out. “Tell me, so I can make my decision accordingly,” she says. “Do you love me?”

Perhaps he could save her, if he could lie to her. If he could break her heart, maybe she would go and make some better life for herself. “Yes,” he says, aching. “Which is why I am begging you to go.”

Margaret blinks rapidly a few times, fighting for control of her face. She steps forward, laying her hand on his chest, fingers brushing the moonstone amulet. “While you are here,” she murmurs, “while you still love me, I will remain. As for Wulfric, let him try to make me small. My father tried it for twenty-five years. I tried to take my own life to escape him, and that has made me think a great deal.” She reaches up, brushes her fingers against his cheek. “I will never let a man so weak be the reason for my end. He can storm and rage all he likes, I have something I didn’t have before.”

She seems for a moment like she might be about to kiss him. Father Algar clears his throat.

Margaret glances over her shoulder at him and lowers her hand from Eadwin’s face. “I am not going to run,” she says. “Not without you.” She turns, inclining her head. “Father.”

“My lady.”

She drags her shawl a little closer and composes her face, wiping at her eyes. “I will see you in the morning, Brother.” She gives him one last look, and leaves.

Were it not for the chair behind him, Eadwin would crumple to the floor.

“Well that was a resounding failure,” Algar sighs.

Eadwin rubs his face with a hand. He can still feel the sting of her slap.

“I would advise you stay here until her handprint fades,” Algar says dryly. “What exactly did you write for her?”

“A few lines of poetry, that’s all,” Eadwin says. “She doesn’t have the copy, I believe she memorized it.”

“Not a complete fool, at least,” Algar mutters.

#.

Eadwin sleeps poorly and is late getting to the castle. He’s well past the hour when Margaret would be at the shrine, and finds her with her brothers as they prepare to depart. They ask again if she will come, and she again declines. She notices Eadwin, but turns her attention back to Harry and Marcus. She embraces them both, and stands watching as they ride out.

Eadwin lingers at the door, and Margaret finally turns to look at him. “You look terrible, Brother.”

“I did not sleep, my lady.”

It’s difficult to read her eyes. She’s still angry with him, he thinks, but some of the fire has gone from it. “Moon mass will begin in a week, will it not?” she asks.

“It will.”

“Do I need to speak to Father Algar about the proper proceedings?”

Eadwin shakes his head. “It is really quite simple. The servants will know how to help you prepare, if you tell them you mean to attend.” Margaret nods. “May one attend for multiple nights?”

“The first two are for the public,” Eadwin says, “the third is for the brothers.”

Another nod. “My lord Wulfric is going hunting again today. Without me.” She gives a thin smile. “Without Aethelric, too, I think.”

“Did Aethelric make it to his bed last night?”

“A bed,” Margaret says. “Not his own. I think Sunna is beginning to tire of him. The hearth girl,” she says when Eadwin looks at her blankly. “I asked her, when she came to tend my fire. I wanted to know if… if she was alright.”

Eadwin nods. “For all his flaws, I’ve never known Aethelric to force his way into a bed where he was not wanted. Though—I won’t say he’s never fallen down too drunk to move in one.”

Margaret laughs softly. “So long as it isn’t mine.” She considers the sky. “I had hoped I might take a walk in the garden today, but it looks like rain.”

Eadwin takes the measure of her tone, her gaze. “If you don’t mind it being a little dark and dusty,” he says, “there’s a storage chamber on the south end of the castle which has plenty of space. Not often frequented.”

“Is there?” Margaret gives a faint smile. “You’ll have to show me. I grow restless, I need to stretch my legs.”

#.

When she has him alone, it might as well be that they never quarreled. “I’ve missed you,” she whispers, pulling his cap from his head. Her hands slide hot down his throat. “It’s been unbearable without you.”

Eadwin traces his fingers from the ermine that edges her gown to the smooth stretch of skin on her shoulder, gazing at her face. Her eyes are hooded with desire as her hands run down his chest to the belt at his waist. She bites her lip, and he kisses her. “You’re too beautiful for a place like this.” In the back of his mind: kindness would be chasing her out of this place with a torch and a whip.

“I wish you would make up your mind whether you want me or not.”

He presses her hard up against the stone wall, careful not to bruise her. He breathes her name, lips at her ear. “You possess my every thought, waking and sleeping.” His hand trails down to her breast and she smiles, her own hands engaged in the task of getting under his habit.

“Would you like to be reborn in me?” she asks, her hand closing around his cock. “How much should I chase you, first?”

He draws her close, taking in the scent of her perfume, of her soaps. Margaret pushes him around and back against the wall. She kisses him, and then slides to her knees in front of him.

A half faded memory, flitting idly through his mind. An older girl, from before he went to the abbey. “If you can find one,” she said, “you always want a lover who came up among the Roses. They’ll call everything an act of Heavenly love.” And Margaret’s voice: the closest I get to feeling the way you’re supposed to feel in worship is when I’m in bed with you.

The sight of her there on the floor, skirts pooling around her as she kneels, could undo him if he weren’t careful. He stops her, eases her up onto an old oak table. Up comes her skirt, and her thighs are hot under his hand. She pulls him in for a kiss, and his fingers slide against and into her and he still marvels at the way her hands tighten on his shoulders, how wet she is. He whispers her name, whispers that he loves her as fervently as he has ever given any prayer.

Margaret sighs and clings to him and presses her face against his shoulder when she comes to stifle the cry. She wants and she wants and Eadwin only wishes there were enough hours in the day to satisfy her. He brings up his hand and she takes it by the wrist, taking his fingers into her mouth. Her eyes alone could ruin him.

She grins when he forces her thighs apart, taking handfuls of black wool. “I will have you out of your clothes again one day,” she says, making a small sound when he presses into her. The moonstone amulet falls against her chest, between her breasts. He kisses her, and her hands slide around to his hips, urging him on.

She clutches at his shoulders, her thighs squeezing tight at his sides. He sighs her name against her throat, grasping her hip as he finishes. Margaret draws him in for another kiss, his temple falling against hers.

He thinks he must imagine it, the whisper of a closing door. Margaret certainly doesn’t seem to hear anything.

She traces a fingertip over his lips. “Into the dark trees she comes a-riding,” she murmurs.

Eadwin traces her cheek with a thumb. “To claim me for her prize.”

#.

Margaret

Margaret hums to herself as she gently brushes the salt away from one of the antlers, to see how it’s drying. The black velvet is drawing closer to the bone, making it look sharper, but it doesn’t seem to be cracking. She scoops the salt back over it, thinking it ought to be left a little longer.

Wulfric had come back from his hunting in a black storm of a mood, having nothing at all to show for it. Margaret had avoided him and taken the children up to her chambers to play by the hearth and avoid their father as he bellowed at the servants. She thought Eadwin had spoken to him, though she didn’t know what about. Wulfric had not spoken a word to her at dinner, and Aethelric was either too drunk or had too much sense to make an appearance.

Margaret had simply moved around Wulfric’s storm clouds not acknowledging his temper though her heart galloped in her chest and she felt her shoulders drawn tight. Wulfric snapped at his children until he riled Wulfwyn into a proper temper and she was sent to bed. Margaret noted her half-eaten plate, and whispered to a maidservant to take it up to Wulfwyn when the dishes were cleared. Everard sniffled quietly until his father could no longer abide him and he too was sent away. Mildred had already fled with the nurse when Wulfwyn began to shout.

Margaret simply ate and left in silence when she was done, almost sick with the tension in her body.

It has been two days now since that, and she has watched impatiently as the moon has slowly grown fatter in the sky. She’s alone for the moment, the children in their lessons with Eadwin, and she is thinking she might go riding if she can find a chaperone.

The door to her outer chambers opens, and Margaret thinks it must be Bramble until she looks up and sees Aethelric leaning against the frame. “Saints and angels,” she says, bringing a hand to her heart. “You surprised me.” She thinks: he shouldn’t have closed the door.

Aethelric smiles, that same cruel smile he gave her the day she met him. “You’re quite the little minx, aren’t you? I would never have guessed, you hide it well under all those prayers.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Margaret says, putting the lid back on her salt box. Her heart is kicking against her ribs. What does he think he knows?

“While my brother was out hunting for his lost pride, I happened to be looking for a place to be alone with someone myself,” Aethelric says as Margaret stands. “Imagine my surprise, when that old store room was already occupied.”

Margaret’s heart drops through the floor. She stares at him, silent.

“I’m impressed, really,” Aethelric says, “I’ve been trying to get to the dear brother for some time, but it’s fairly easy for me to see what you have that I don’t.” He glances up and down her body.

“Be silent,” Margaret says, hating the waver in her voice.

Aethelric’s smile grows. “Oh, that won’t work for you at all in this house, my lady. You’re going to have to get better at denying things if you mean to carry on.”

Her dagger itches at the inside of her sleeve, and Margaret knows it’s stupid and desperate. “What do you want?” she asks, thinking: I’ll do anything.

“Want? Oh, no, Lady Margaret, I’m not that crude. What I’m here to do is tell you to leave before you get in worse trouble than you’re already in. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here.” He adjusts his shoulder against the door frame. “Wulfric is already starting to hate you. Not just for that stag, of course. He thinks you’re too soft on Everard, and yesterday when he caught Wulfwyn’s temper, would you like to know what she said to him?”

Margaret just stares at him.

In a falsetto imitation of Wulfyn, “Lady Margaret wouldn’t do this to me. You should have seen his face.”

“Seems to have brought you plenty of joy,” Margaret says.

“Oh, I’ve always enjoyed a laugh at his expense. It’s almost too easy, don’t you think? The more proud a man is, the easier it is to laugh at him. But I’m his brother, and for good or ill he has to tolerate me. You?” Aethelric laughs and steps toward her. “No, you he’ll beat, until your bones crack and there won’t be a day that dear Brother Eadwin can hold you that won’t hurt.” Arms folded, he comes to stand too close to her, looking down at her. “If you have an ounce of good sense in your head,” he says, “you’ll take the first opportunity presented to you and run.”

“You need to leave,” Margaret says, her voice low.

Aethelric gives a single, quiet laugh. “You two seemed quite familiar with each other, I must say. One wonders how long this has been going on. I have to assume it started on your way here, when there were fewer people to notice or care. But how soon after you left your father’s house, I wonder? Did you persuade him to take you away by pulling up your skirts?”

Margaret brings the point of her dagger level with the edge of Aethelric’s ribs, pressing just firmly enough to be felt. “Step. Back.”

Aethelric smiles again, taking just one step away from her. “Perhaps the servants are right, you are too much like a man. Ready to kill for your honor.”

“If you so much as breathe a word—”

“You misunderstand,” Aethelric says. “It never pays to be the bearer of bad news to my brother, and even were that not the case, I’m trying to avoid the beating and disgrace that is headed your way. It won’t just be you, you know. He’ll be out for the brother’s head. And Brother Eadwin has been so good to us these past sixteen years, it would be a shame to lose him because of this. No—if you have any mercy from the Mother in this, Lady Margaret, it’s that no one will want to be the one to tell him, and no one will want it to fall back on Brother Eadwin. But this house is riddled with ears and eyes and secrets can only be kept for so long. My brother is no stag to be shot down in the forest. Our father named him after the wolves for good reason.”

“I’ll not go back to Grenacre,” Margaret says, “and I’ll not go to the nuns.”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to decide if you’re more afraid of poverty than the notion that you might be the reason for your lover’s death,” Aethelric replies with a cheery tone. “A hunter like you, you could make a life for yourself. You’re educated, too, that’s worth plenty outside of walls like these. Wulfric already hates you, Lady Margaret, and his pride will not endure another blow without consequence.”

The door opens, and Sunna the hearth girl has come with wood for the fire. She looks at Aethelric, and her face colors in what might be humiliation or anger. She looks at Margaret, standing there with her dagger still held out.

“Pardon me, just leaving,” Aethelric says. “We were just having a chat, as future brother and sister.” He gives Margaret one last cool smile, and walks away.

Margaret lets out a breath, and sheathes her dagger.

“Everything alright, m’lady?” Sunna asks.

“Yes,” Margaret lies. “Yes, everything’s fine.”

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon V.

As a Hunter

5.8k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Margaret

The world drops out from beneath Margaret’s feet. For a moment she can’t speak, can’t move. It takes effort to remember how to breathe. “Father is dead?” she asks, her voice strange to her own ears. “How?” He was aging, yes, but not old and he was never particularly frail. She would have half expected him to draw sword against the Angel of Death.

“His heart, near as the Sun surgeons can guess,” Harry says. “He was fine one moment and down the next, as though an elf shot him.”

“Worked himself up into one of his rages,” Marcus says. “Suppose his heart finally burst.”

Margaret winces.

“When we met him on our way home—since we weren’t expecting him to be traveling,” Harry says, with a note of reproach, “he tells us this wild story that you’ve run off with some monk to marry a lord in the north and that this monk detained you in Hawbend when Father sent one of his men after you.”

Margaret gives a cold and sharp laugh, her head beginning to clear and come to focus. She thrusts out her arm, dragging the sleeve up so they can see the thin white scars. “No one detained me,” she says. “I would not go back. But for Brother Eadwin, I would be dead.”

Marcus pulls back from the scars, or else the look on Margaret’s face. Harry just gazes at her, his arms folded, looking terribly like their father. Margaret can’t quite reckon him dead, half of her expects this to be a trick, or else a dream. How could his heart simply stop? That sort of thing only happened to other men.

“Is that the only reason you agreed to this?” Harry asks. “Because if it were, then home need not be so frightful, now.”

“I do not intend to grow old and rot away to dust in Grenacre,” Margaret says, with more force than she imagined she had in her. Harry does not frighten her the way their father did. “If I leave this place now, in this way, no man will ever ask for my hand again. They’ll say to themselves, well, the fickle bitch has already run back home once.”

Harry’s mouth twitches to hear her speak like that. Any coarse language she knows, of course, she learned from her brothers.

“Is this what you’ve come all this way to do?” Margaret asks, summoning up her anger. “Come all this way to fulfill our father’s wish to keep me locked up like a songbird he can’t even abide? Have you looked at this house, at these lands? What possible better match could you arrange for me than this one?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Harry asks. “Why did Wulfric Seward even know your name?”

“Oh, he didn’t,” Margaret says, airy as she circles past the window. “That is another thing for which I can thank Brother Eadwin. Seems he’s looked after me more competently than you have.” That will fester under Harry’s skin for years.

“Just who are you, that you bring my sister here for Lord Wulfric?” Harry asks, looking to Eadwin still at the door.

“I am Lord Wulfric’s spiritual counselor,” Eadwin says in a cool voice. “And his liaison between the estate and the abbey.”

“And for what reason do you find yourself lurking here now, listening in on family business?”

“Lady Margaret asked me to come,” Eadwin says. “Lest someone should try to force her will, as they did in Hawbend.”

Margaret can see her brother stewing on that, and let him stew. She’s so angry she feels she could spit fire. She was just beginning to find her way here, and now Harry’s come to complicate everything. “I suppose since you’re here,” she says, cold, “you can stay until Lord Wulfric returns. I’m sure he’ll be interested to meet you.” He will want to calculate what sort of sons she will bear.

Margaret stands with her back to the window, arms folded and her shadow looming dark on the floor. Of all the blasted indignities, to have her brothers come trying to collect her home now. Oh, she could tell them just what sort of woman she is, if they want to ruin her reputation anyway. “He’ll also be interested to talk to you about my dowry,” Margaret says, “since Father didn’t see fit to send it with me. The terms he set were terrible, of course, I should think you’ll have to improve upon them.”

Harry’s lip twitches again as he moves to face her. “As I find myself in the position of being Lord Beckett now, I don’t see why I shouldn’t call you back to Grenacre anyway, if the terms are so poorly set as to be disgraceful.”

“I will make your life a hell,” Margaret replies evenly. This was always the way of their arguments as children: the only way for Margaret to win was for her stubbornness to run out Harry’s patience.

“My lady,” Eadwin says, “Lord Wulfric has returned.”

Margaret gives Harry a thin smile, and pulls herself away from the window. “I should greet my lord,” she says, in the same high false voice she always used when they made her play princess in their games. She thinks: is this not what you wanted? Is this not what you and Father always wanted me to be? She turns. “Brother Eadwin, will you accompany me?”

Eadwin nods, and opens the door for her.

The wind is roaring through the trees when they go out on the steps, and it tugs fiercely at Margaret’s skirts and shawl. Wulfric seems to be in good humor as he swings out of the saddle and hands the reins off to a stableman. Margaret greets him with a smile. “Was it a good ride, my lord?”

“Yes,” he says, and kisses her cheek. Margaret manages not to shrink away. She thinks that her knees ache. Wulfric looks at her face. “You seem pale, has something happened in my absence?”

“My brothers Henry and Marcus are here,” Margaret says. “They tell me—” Her voice catches in her throat a moment, the reality still impossible. “They tell me our father has passed unexpectedly.”

“Ah, I am sorry to hear that,” Wulfric says, with no particular passion. “Is one of them Lord of Grenacre, now?”

“Yes, my lord, my brother Henry. Shall I introduce you to them?”

“Yes, I think I should meet my betrothed’s own kinfolk.” He looks past her. “Everything alright, Brother?”

“Yes, my lord.” Eadwin is a shadow, a watchful crow at Wulfric’s shoulder.

Wulfric makes it clear to Aethelric that he will be unwelcome. Aethelric smiles serenely and says he’s off to find the hearth girl. Margaret feels almost bad for him, but not quite.

Harry and Marcus are perfectly cordial, as is Wulfric. It reminds Margaret of dogs meeting for the first time, judging each other by eye and scent, deciding whether or not to growl. Margaret hangs back by the window. Eadwin stands at the opposite side, arms folded, watching in stony silence. She wonders how often people—how often Wulfric forgets he’s there.

She wonders if she’s the only one in the room that could never forget.

Wulfric insists that Harry and Marcus must stay for a few days, see the estate that their sister will soon be mistress of. Margaret wishes he wouldn’t—she doesn’t know how she can get a moment alone with Eadwin if she has two of her own brothers lurking about. If it were Felix, she could abide it. Felix would understand, would keep her secrets. Only Felix thought she ought to be allowed to be a knight, sometimes.

“My lord,” Margaret says, when there is a lull in the conversation.

“Yes?”

“I should like to go to the church, to pray for my father. If my absence will not be an inconvenience.”

“No, no, of course you must go,” Wulfric says with a nod. “Brother Eadwin, if you will take the lady.”

Harry and Marcus, who have never been much given for prayers, blessedly do not volunteer to come along.

Eadwin glances at her as they step back out into the wind. “That was a clever little trick.”

“It was either that or grow fangs and claws and begin to tear my brothers apart.” Margaret lets out a breath. “I don’t know whether to be relieved that my father is gone, or furious at the rotten luck of my brothers being here now.”

“Do you really wish to go to the church?”

“I think if I were found not to, it would make Wulfric suspicious.” She glances at him. “At least I can speak to you at the church.”

Eadwin nods. “That you can.”

#.

Eadwin

Eadwin keeps to the back of the sanctuary as Margaret makes an offering for her father’s safe passage to Paradise. “I would rather he be there than a ghost to haunt me,” she says. They sit out in the entry hall to to talk, so as not to bother any other worshipers. They are visible to anyone passing by, they keep properly distant.

Every boy that comes through on some chore or another slows his pace just a little to look at Margaret, but blessedly she is too caught up in her thoughts to notice, or Eadwin would have to give more than a stern look to chase them off.

The slimmest edge of the paper is visible in Margaret’s bodice, and for a moment Eadwin imagines writing the poetry right onto her skin, drawing a pen against flesh to write an adoration. He imagines the ink smearing between them, marking them both. Some tangible evidence, if only that wouldn’t be so dangerous.

He imagines her hunting again, those clear gray eyes training an arrow through the heart of a stag. Riding back to camp with it draped over the back of her horse.

“I just can’t believe he’s dead,” Margaret murmurs. “I feel almost as though I killed him. Part of me wishes I had.” She looks at him. “Should I atone for that?”

“A man who drives his own child to wish for death rather than return to him is not a man who needs to be atoned to, my lady,” Eadwin says. “Not to my way of thinking.” He had never made any offerings for his father. Hadn’t even told his brothers here when he received the news.

Margaret looks at him, those gray eyes searching. “Your father, has he passed?”

Eadwin nods. “Some ten years ago, now. He drowned.” They had found his body in the black mud of the Penbreak, pale and swollen, after he had been missing for three days. Drowned because of the drink, they said, though that could not account for his broken bones. Osgar had been much better at making enemies than he had at making friends.

“Did you ever see him again after you left?”

Eadwin shakes his head. “I wouldn’t go anywhere near home while he lived. And because of my work here, I’ve not been back since.”

“What of your mother?”

“She still lives, so far as I know.” He wonders what she’s like, with Osgar a decade gone. In his memory his mother always snaps when she’s frightened, and she is very often frightened. She would be seventy-five. It is possible she still brews beer. Possible, also, that his sister Fortune has taken that over. News comes infrequently to him in Eagletop, but he thinks she has a second husband, after the first died of the same fever that took Prue, their youngest sister. He knows she has children, and that she was raising Prue’s daughter.

Margaret is fidgeting with her prayer beads, keeping her hands busy. He thinks of her anger at her brothers, and supposes they must not frighten her much. Easy enough to see the resemblance between them—he imagines Wulfric must be pleased to see the broad shoulders, straight backs, and in particular the self assurance with which the younger Henry Beckett carries himself. “How are you doing with the children, my lady?” he asks.

“Oh,” Margaret murmurs, “well enough, all things considered. Wulfwyn, the poor girl—I asked the nurse if Lady Anna’s dresses were still about, if Wulfwyn could be allowed to choose a few to keep as they were for when she grows, and the rest cut into new dresses for her. It seems a terrible waste to just put them away somewhere to be eaten by the moths.” She rubs the rose medal between her fingers, staring into the distance. “I think her father sees her as a plaything. So long as she pleases and amuses him, he’ll be good to her, and when her temper clashes with his then he says she gives him only grief. It will be hardest for her when he chooses a husband for her, I think. If she doesn’t learn to hold her temper, he will want her married sooner than later.”

“And Everard?”

Margaret sighs. “I won his heart by being kind about his little dog. He says Wulfric kicks her if she gets too near, so she hates and is afraid of him. I told him so long as she was well behaved, he could always bring her to sit by my fire. He told me he likes stories about knight—and I suspect he’d be better suited to writing them than acting them out. I said I would read to him this evening. And Mildred—well. Mildred is five.”

Eadwin nods. “You’ve become acquainted with Cheese, I take it?”

“I thought I hadn’t hear her right, at first,” Margaret says with a smile. “Why on earth did she name her doll that?”

“Because she is five, and it made her mother laugh.” He should have done more for Lady Anna, while she lived.

“My dolls were all named after knights and heroes and battle queens,” Margaret says. “My queens rescued my knights as often as the other way round.”

“She brings the doll to all her lessons,” Eadwin says. “I would say Cheese is one of my best students, but I am reliably informed by Mildred she is in fact very naughty and never says her prayers or practices her letters.”

Margaret laughs and rubs at her eye for a moment. “Heavenly Mother,” she whispers, “if it were just the children I wouldn’t have a fear in the world.”

Father Algar appears, having apparently been told that Lady Margaret is in the church. His eyes flick between them for a moment and he approaches. “My lady,” he says, “can I do anything for you while you’re here?”

Margaret smiles weakly. “No, Father, I only—my brothers came, to tell me our father has passed. It is enough comfort to be here.”

“May his road to Paradise be a soft one,” Father Algar says. “Would you like us to sing a mourning song for him?”

“They will hold his funeral in Grenacre, I should think,” Margaret says. “But thank you, Father. If you would say a prayer for him, that would be enough.”

Algar nods. “Of course, my lady.” To Eadwin he says, “Brother, I would like to speak to you after mass.”

“I will be ready, Father.” He wonders if he’s done something, or if some trouble has come up.

Margaret does not wish to hurry back, and they linger long enough for Marcus Beckett to make an appearance. “Wanted to make sure you hadn’t gotten lost,” he says, pausing to make a sign of prayer to the shrine of Saint Luce which stands in the entry hall. “Are you alright?”

“That’s a fool question to ask,” Margaret says, without any fire.

“I suppose so,” Marcus says.

“Where’s Harry?”

“With your husband-to-be, hashing out the details of your dowry.” Marcus grimaces. “They had no need of me, and if I had to spend another moment with that man giving me the same wretched smile our father always gave to guests I was going to carve it off his face. I don’t know how you can abide it.”

“I have been made to abide a great many things,” Margaret replies evenly. “Are you going to stay, then?”

“For a few days. Harry wants to go back to Grenacre for our father’s funeral, and then he’ll probably drag Felix and Theadora both here for your wedding. I brought you a horse, thought you might like to go for a ride.”

Margaret’s mouth presses into a thin line. “I suppose I can’t stop him.” She brushes out her skirts and stands with a sigh. “I’m sorry for keeping you so long, Brother.”

“It is no inconvenience, my lady,” he says, rising with her. “My duty is to see to the needs of all my lord’s household.”

The corner of Margaret’s mouth pulls up just a little. “That seems a great burden to carry indeed. Will you come to dinner?”

Eadwin nods. “Yes, my lady.”

He goes with them out through the churchyard, watches Margaret pull herself up into the saddle. She makes no complaint of the wind, which has died down only a little. “Where would you suggest, Brother?” she asks. “For a short ride?”

“Out along the fields,” he says, gesturing. “The hedgerows will guide you back, and there will be fewer tree limbs to fall and frighten your horses.”

Marcus thanks him and they set out, speaking between themselves and their words lost in the wind well before they reach Eadwin’s ears.

He catches one of the young brothers, tells him to inform Father Algar that he will not be at dinner, and returns to the castle.

If Aethelric did indeed find the hearth girl he’s done with her now, and being still unwelcome in the company of Lord Wulfric and the new Lord Henry he is sitting in the stables, drinking. Eadwin finds him only because he asks a servant.

“What do you want?” Aethelric grumbles. His mood is curdled, but there’s not yet straw in his hair so the day might yet be salvageable.

“You might allow yourself to be at least a little sober by dinner.” Eadwin takes the bottle from him, and Aethelric lets it go without much fight, which is a good sign.

Aethelric sighs, putting his head back against the wall of the stable. “What I don’t understand, Brother, is why you’re going to help Wulfric ruin another perfectly good woman.”

Eadwin sets the bottle aside, conscious of the work of the stable boys mucking out stalls. “I know you were always on good terms with Lady Anna.” Even though she scolded him more fiercely than anyone in the house, which was an equation Eadwin could never really make sense of. But then, he supposes, Aethelric has always been fond of pestering him as well, so perhaps it’s some perverseness in his nature. Wulfric doesn’t scold, he only bellows about what a worthless drunken layabout and whoremonger his younger brother is, and Heaven’s Queen be thanked that nothing has happened to Wulfric to leave Eagletop in Aethelric’s hands.

“I know she was my sister by law, but she was properly like a sister,” Aethelric says. “And every year in this rotten place she got a little smaller. And that woman—” Aethelric gestures vaguely outside, as if he believes Margaret to be lurking in the horseyard. “—that woman finds Wulfric repugnant. I can see it in her eyes.”

Perhaps the worst thing about Aethelric is that in spite of his habits, he’s always had a keen eye for people. If he weren’t so fond of the drink, he could make himself quite dangerous.

“And you,” Aethelric says, “you know it. And you know she ought to. And yet you still brought her here.”

“If that’s your measure of the situation, you could stand to be a little kinder to Lady Margaret.”

“Kinder?” Aethelric asks, his brows rising. He draws up one of his knees, slinging his elbow across it. “Kindness would be chasing her out of this place with a torch and a whip, before we let Eagletop rip the guts out of her. If you mean I should be sweeter to her, now that’ll just make her think she could survive here, and she won’t. Worse, it might give her ideas that are just a little too dangerous for me. No, better no man here be too sweet to her.” Aethelric’s head is beginning to list to one side, and he gives Eadwin that stupid smile again. “You could stand to be a little sweeter to me, Brother.”

“Forgive me, my lord, but I have never once thought you were worth the trouble.”

Aethelric laughs. “I suppose I can’t blame you for that.” He fumbles upward for a grasp on the stable door and pulls himself up. “Lady Margaret, though—if she were promised to any other man in the world but my brother, she might almost be worth the trouble.” He cups his hands in the air, before his chest.

Eadwin smiles thinly. “Not every thought needs to be shared with your spiritual counsel, my lord.”

#.

Lady Margaret and her brother return to the castle shortly after the rain begins. They are only a little damp, and Margaret goes up to her chambers to put on fresh clothes. Marcus Beckett goes to mutter something to his lord brother, and Eadwin keeps by the fire while Wulfwyn does her stitching and Everard his reading. Mildred is under a table, playing with her dolls.

Yes, if it were only the children, Margaret need not fear anything, because all of the children have a little of Lady Anna’s mild temper in them. What has troubled Eadwin since Wulfric sent him out is the implication that Lady Anna was impious, which he never took her to be. She was perhaps not so ardent about her faith, but it was at her request that Eadwin has taught her children their prayers and stories, and at her will that the children have always been brought at least once a week to mass, even when their lady mother was ill, and after her death.

He wonders what excuse Wulfric will manufacture for his failure to produce the sons he wants if Margaret’s children resemble these ones, because he is certain of one thing: Wulfric will never place the blame upon himself.

“Brother Eadwin,” Wulfwyn says, clearly bored of her embroidery. “Do Rose churches do things much differently than Moon churches?”

He supposes she must have heard that Margaret grew up with the Roses. “Do you remember what the Order of the Moon says is the surest way to our Heavenly Queen?”

Wulfwyn senses that this has been turned into a lesson and gives him an appropriately annoyed frown. In an altogether unflattering impression of his own diction, she recites, “Union with the Queen of Heaven is achieved through the bypassing of the ego or self, which we only imagine separates us from Her.”

Eadwin smiles faintly. “Which means?”

She drops the impression. “We are all of us connected to the Mother, but sometimes we need help to know it, so we can hear Her will and try to understand Her mysteries.”

Eadwin nods. “The Order of the Rose doesn’t disagree, but they place a greater importance on the Queen’s Creation. They say it is their duty to care for all things that live, an echo of Her love. Through care for others and the cultivation of beauty, they honor the Queen of Heaven with their labors and gratitude.”

“Is that why she gave me Mother’s jewelry?”

“She gave you your mother’s jewelry because she felt it belonged to you,” Eadwin says. “But I think it was still an act of love.”

Wulfwyn falls quiet, perhaps troubled by the notion that a stranger could act lovingly to her. “Mildred ought to have something, don’t you think?” she asks. “But—she’s only five.”

“You can choose a few pieces to set aside for her, to give when she’s older,” Eadwin says.

“Will she even remember Mother?”

“Not as well as you do,” he says. “You will have to tell her stories.”

“Brother Eadwin,” Everard says, very clearly having not being doing any reading for the last few minutes. “Did you bring Lady Margaret here because she’s so kind?”

He thinks: I brought her here because I was tired. “I took that into consideration.”

Aethelric has returned from a lengthy period of isolation in his chambers. He’s not properly sober, but he is washed and combed and freshly dressed. He greets Margaret’s brothers politely enough, and Wulfric watches him like a master of hounds prepared to strike an unpredictable cur.

Margaret, when she appears, is dressed in sea blue. Wulfric has gifted her a new hairnet—one of the few things that can be made quickly, Eadwin supposes—and it glimmers in the firelight, freshwater pearls adorning each joining place. She looks, properly, like the lady of a house such as this. As in her father’s house, she carries herself well, with a straight posture and a lifted chin. Her smile comes a little easier here, though it has a hollowness to it. She speaks to her brothers, to Wulfric, and after a moment she comes over to the fire and Everard gives up all semblance of doing his reading.

Margaret sits beside Wulfwyn, looking at her embroidery. “You have a steady hand,” she says. “I always hated my embroidery lessons. I was too impatient.”

“I hate them too,” Wulfwyn confides. “I keep pricking myself with the needle.”

“You’re better at it than I ever was,” Margaret says, which might be flattery but it pleases Wulfwyn. Margaret gives Eadwin a small smile and gestures Wulfwyn’s embroidery. “These are daffodils, yes?”

Wulfwyn nods. “They grow all over, first thing in the spring. You missed them, though.”

“I shall be pleased to see them next spring,” Margaret says. She looks to Everard, who has his arms fully across the pages of the book. “What are you reading?”

She handles them well, Eadwin thinks. If only Wulfric placed any real value on how well she can speak with them, make them feel cared for. If only he valued the notion that his children felt cared for at all. He half listens as Everard tells her about the book, a collection of myths concerning the Queen of Heaven and her angels, their major variations according to place and religious order, and commentary from church scholars. He’s watching the lock of hair intentionally left loose on Margaret’s cheek, curled and gleaming.

“That seems quite a lot for your age,” Margaret says.

“Brother Eadwin is helping me.”

“I’m glad,” Margaret says, smiling.

The dinner itself is almost peaceable. Margaret sits at Wulfric’s side, Aethelric on the other and Eadwin just beyond. Lord Henry and Marcus take up the opposite side of the table, and the children sit wherever they will. There is talk of wedding preparations, of the funeral they will have in Grenacre. The point of tension comes when Henry asks if Margaret will come back for their father’s rites, and the answer is no. “He would have dragged me back by my hair and disgraced me before the entire realm,” she says. “I will pray for his soul here in Eagletop.”

“Flaming angels,” Aethelric almost shouts. “I wish I could have done that. Wulfric, you should have sent me off to marry some foreign woman when our father died.”

“For the love of the Blessed Mother and all Her saints be quiet,” Wulfric snaps.

Aethelric’s mood for humoring politeness has apparently run out. He leans around to speak directly to Margaret. “I turned up piss drunk and half dressed midway through the rites, I wouldn’t be surprised if the brothers still talk about it. Do they, Brother Eadwin?”

“When they are warning the younger ones about you, my lord,” Eadwin says, dry. It is mostly truth—Father Algar is very keen that none of the boys get too friendly with Aethelric.

Aethelric laughs. “Good. Someone ought to learn from my mistakes.” As things are cleared away, Eadwin excuses himself to leave. He will be expected at the church, to make ready for mass. Margaret asks her brothers if they will come, and they say they will. The night is clear and cold.

The church is lit, and mass is performed. Wulfric is in attendance once again, seated between Margaret and Henry. He has brought his children this time, either at Margaret’s request or to give a certain impression to her brothers. He does not linger to ask anything of Eadwin this time. He watches them leave, watches Margaret use her brother to put distance between herself and Wulfric.

As the sanctuary is tended to, he goes back to Father Algar’s office. “You wanted to see me?”

“I wanted to tell you I have handled the questions about the bloodstain on your clothes,” Father Algar says. “Since in your absence rumors were likely to run rampant.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That while you were away you saved the life of some poor soul who otherwise would have lost it. That is all they need to know.”

Eadwin nods. “Anything else?”

“I have asked Sir Laure and Sir Eva if they would consider staying for a time,” Father Algar says. “Until the wedding. I said there was a possibility that Lady Margaret may not want to go through with it—a possibility they seemed curiously prepared for,” he adds, giving Eadwin a pointed look.

“On what are you basing that assumption?” Eadwin asks, suspecting he knows the answer.

“On the grounds that I am going to ask you to persuade her not to.” Eadwin lets out a breath. “Father—”

“You’ve made this mess, Brother, I am asking you to do something to clean it up. It will be better for everyone if she does not go through with this.”

“Her brothers have already tried, she refuses to go back to Grenacre.”

“Then persuade her to a convent,” Father Algar says. “You shouldn’t have to do much to make it seem more appealing than remaining where she is.”

“I do not think she will accept that, Father.”

“And why not?”

Eadwin thinks for too long on how to answer. “Father, I do not believe she will go anywhere she cannot see me. I think that is the primary reason she has insisted on keeping this course.”

Father Algar closes his eyes with an expression that says he is employing a great deal of restraint in not reaching across the desk to throttle Eadwin. “Saints grant me patience,” he mutters.

“I will try,” Eadwin says. “I will say everything I can think to say, but I will not force her hand. I am afraid of what she would do if I tried.” And it will have to be done in the brief moments when he can speak to her alone, when she will not want to hear a word of their parting.

Father Algar lets out a low breath and he nods. “Then we shall have to pray that that is enough.”

#.

Margaret

She has kept the paper against her breast all day, even after her change of clothes. She has felt its folded edges softening against her skin, has thought of Eadwin’s hand penning it in the dark and caressing her in the sunlight. It has lent her strength and solace every time Wulfric has laid a hand on her shoulder or kissed her cheek. It has burned at the edges of her mind since she read the first few lines, and realized what it was.

Now she has sent away the maidservants, and there is only her in these chambers, and a candle, and this paper. She unfolds it carefully, her ear sharpened for any sound, though she has said she does not want to be disturbed until morning. Eadwin’s handwriting is plain and unadorned, but smooth. The black ink stretches in slim lines, like arms reaching up to Heaven and down to Paradise.

As a hunter my Queen comes riding, with hair of burning sunlight and eyes of silver dawn. Into the dark trees She comes a-riding to claim me for Her prize.

On stag’s hooves I fly from Her, not of fear but for the chase. Her hounds will rout me out, Her hands will hang my hide.

This crown of antlers is of Her make, I wore it not before, but as a hunter She comes riding and I the hart to fall.

My Queen will level Her arrow, the shaft runs straight and true, and for the chase I will leap, willingly, into Her view. My Queen will loose Her dart to fly and for Her, and Her alone, I will let it strike.

As a hunter my Queen will come to me and Her hands will cut me open and take out my arrow-struck heart.

Let Her drink my life’s blood, let Her eat my flesh, let it redden Her lips. Let Her suck the marrow from my bones and dress Herself in my skin, for I give my life to Her, to keep as She wills and in the belly of my Queen, I will be reborn.

And in the trees so dark and dim I will place the antlered crown upon my head and I will be again the prize When as a hunter my Queen comes a-riding.

Margaret lets out a breath, tracing the words with her fingertip. She bites her lip with a smile as she reads in the belly of my Queen, a twinge running through her. She reads it perhaps half a dozen times, committing as much of it as she can to memory, because she knows it will not be safe for her to keep this. The description of her hair and eyes is too specific, and she cannot believe that someone here would not recognize Eadwin’s hand.

She touches the paper to her lips, whispering, “For her, and her alone.”

#.

Eadwin

He meets her at the shrine the next morning. She has not brought the children with her.

Margaret is pouring water into the basin at the feet of the Mother when he arrives, and neither seeing nor hearing anyone about, she pulls the poem from her bodice. “It is beautiful,” she says, handing it to him. “I thought of it all night. But I wonder—if there is just one line you could add for me.”

He opens it to read the single line she has written in.

My Queen will level Her arrow, the shaft runs straight and true, with falcon feathers fletched

He considers it in silence for a moment, and looks up as he folds the paper into it already quite worn creases, taking her in. He doesn’t know what it means to her, but perhaps he doesn’t need to. Perhaps he only needs to know that it does mean something. “Yes, my lady, I can do that.”

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon IV.

Eagletop Castle

6.5k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Eadwin

He recounts for Wulfric his first meeting with Lord Henry and Margaret (leaving out what his lordship doesn’t need to know), and Margaret’s terror at being retaken. “It is that which caused her illness, my lord,” he says. “The man is a devil to her.”

“You’re certain it’s because he hates her?” Aethelric asks, refilling his cup. “Some men, after all, love their daughters a little too much.”

“Be silent,” Wulfric snaps. Then, to Eadwin: “You’re confident in the status of her virtue?”

“Absolutely,” Eadwin says. After all, he was there.

“Then that is good enough for me.” Wulfric claps a hand on his shoulder. “It is good to have you back, Brother. Wulfwyn has been absolutely impossible without you.”

“Yes, Brother Eadwin, it’s so good to see your face again,” Aethelric says, standing and—too gracefully for a man as drunk as Eadwin knows he must be—swanning over to lean heavily on Eadwin’s shoulder. “All the maidservants have been weeping inconsolably in your absence, and a number of the men as well.”

Eadwin is accustomed to ignoring Aethelric when he’s like this. It’s more polite than telling a lord’s brother that he would be better suited to life as a fool. “My lord, might your son be excused?” Wulfwyn slipped out without her brother, and the poor boy doesn’t dare leave without his father’s dismissal. He’s been lurking by the hearth like a kicked dog, and he shouldn’t be here for this.

Wulfric casts Everard a disdainful glance. “Go on, then.” The boy bolts.

Aethelric apparently isn’t in the mood to tolerate being ignored. “Come now, Brother, I’ve heard so much about that holy scepter, when will you let me see it?” His hand starts to slide down the front of Eadwin’s chest and as Eadwin has done at least a hundred times before he takes Aethelric’s wrist and pulls it away.

“I can be as pretty as any maiden,” Aethelric says with a grin. “Or perhaps you like to play the maiden’s role?”

“Were I a woman, my lord, they would have stopped calling me a maiden some time ago.” He would not have played one blushing and shy any better than Aethelric would.

“It’s to Aethelric’s benefit that the had no maidenhead to lose,” Wulfric says dryly. “He would have given it up to a kitchen boy for a sweet.”

“Nonsense, I would have gotten at least a cup of wine,” Aethelric replies. “That would make it almost a proper marriage.”

Sometimes it is easy to forget that Aethelric is thirty-two and not the sixteen year old Eadwin first met. He has changed little in all the years Eadwin has known him. Perhaps more bitter when he’s deep in his cups, perhaps more shameless in his pursuit of absolutely anyone who will let him under their clothes.

Even so, Eadwin would almost feel better if it were Aethelric he was bringing Margaret to. Aethelric’s cruelty lay only in cold beds and drunken slurs.

“You said there was some trouble with your daughter, my lord?” Eadwin says, shrugging Aethelric off.

It is then that Eadwin learns that the chambers Margaret has just been sent off to were the late Lady Anna’s, and Eadwin cannot fathom why Wulfric cannot see why that should be so upsetting for his eldest daughter. “I suspect she feels you have forgotten her mother, my lord, or else that you want Lady Anna to be forgotten. That would be difficult for any child, but especially a girl of her age.” Before he had been sent out, Wulfwyn had burst into tears in the middle of her lesson, saying her father would not even speak of her mother anymore.

“What should I do?” Wulfric asks impatiently. “Leave the rooms untouched and unused, as a memorial? This house is not infinite.”

“I only mean that you might reassure Wulfwyn that her mother is not being replaced,” Eadwin says, knowing Wulfric will do no such thing, or do it clumsily. Eadwin has already advised him on this point once, and clearly that advice was not heeded. “Otherwise it will cause unnecessary discord between her and Lady Margaret.”

“Oh, can’t have that,” Aethelric says, sinking back onto the bench at the table. “Already so much discord in this house, it ought to split down the middle like a plum after the rains.”

“What else have you learned about her, then?” Wulfric asks, going to stand by the fire. “What does she do when she isn’t praying?”

“Lady Margaret is a fine archer,” Eadwin says, “as your cousin Lady Hild will attest. She has a fondness for riding, and sometimes hunted with her brothers in Grenacre.”

“A woman who hunts?” Aethelric says. “Saints and angels, you might have found the perfect woman for my brother.”

Wulfric seems less certain, as Eadwin feared.

“Though I suppose,” Aethelric says, “can you really trust the virtue of a woman who rides that much? I’ve heard some of them don’t bleed at all, their first time round, even if no one’s ever touched them.”

Eadwin wishes very much that Aethelric would find something else to do with his time.

“My lord,” Eadwin says, “you might give her some jewelry. I suspect her father would have kept her in rags, if he could have justified it.”

“Indeed,” Wulfric says. “Would that all brides be so easily bought.”

#.

Margaret

She leaves Wulfwyn and Mildred in the outer chambers while she bathes, attended by the maidservant, Bramble. Bramble is a little younger than herself, Margaret thinks, dark-haired and pinch-faced. Quiet. She selects a fresh dress for Margaret and hangs it up, pale yellow satin embroidered with small cornflowers.

“That was a kind thing you did for Lady Wulfwyn,” Bramble murmurs. “She has felt so terribly alone since her mother passed.”

Margaret thinks the girl is right to be upset. Margaret doesn’t need Anna’s tapestries or ribbons, her books or her combs. It would make her no happier to have a dead woman’s jewelry than it would make Wulfwyn to see her wearing it. She can hear Wulfwyn now, scolding her younger sister for something.

It puts a knot in Margaret’s gut that she doesn’t know when she’ll next see Eadwin or be able to speak to him alone. At least, she thinks, Wulfric expects her to be pious. He will not think it strange if she frequents the church.

When she is dressed and her hair is bound, Margaret goes out to find that Everard has joined his sisters, though he is sitting by himself at the fire with a little terrier. Wulfwyn has crammed all of her mother’s jewelry into a box, and is busy turning through the books. Mildred appears to be under the bed, playing with her doll.

“Hello,” Margaret says softly, settling into a chair by the fire. “What’s your dog called?”

Everard looks at her shyly, drawing the dog closer. “Blossom.”

“That’s a lovely name,” Margaret says. “Does she do any tricks?”

“She’ll dance for a bit of beef.”

“That’s wonderful, did you teach her to do that?” She looks at Everard’s shrinking posture and thinks, I must have looked like that once.

Perhaps Everard would have answered her, but Lord Wulfric has come up to see how she is settling in. Wulfwyn freezes, and Everard shrinks further, curling over his dog. Mildred, still under the bed, plays on undisturbed.

Eadwin has come up as well. He looks tired, and Margaret has to tear her eyes away from him when Wulfric speaks. “What is this?” he asks, looking at Wulfwyn and the bursting box of jewelry. “Are you turning into a little thief?”

“Please, my lord,” Margaret says, rising. “I thought she should have her mother’s jewelry, and whatever other mementos she might desire. I have my own books.”

Wulfric looks between them for a moment, his betrothed and his daughter, and he nods. “Very well, then. How do you find the rooms?”

She thinks, I wish you were not putting me in a dead woman’s bed. She thinks it’s better to have bled in an alehouse than another woman’s sheets. “They are lovely, thank you.” She is aware of Bramble behind her, coaxing Mildred out from under the bed. She is aware of Eadwin in the corner of her eye, bending to speak quietly to Everard with a hand on his shoulder.

Wulfric begins to turn and Margaret thinks, I have to keep his attention off the boy. “My lord,” she says, “I wondered if I might see the church.”

“Of course,” he says, with that false smile. “Brother Eadwin, will you be coming with us?”

“Yes, my lord,” Eadwin says, standing. “I will need to speak to Father Algar.”

“Shall we expect you at dinner, or no?”

Eadwin won’t look at her, only at Wulfric. “No, my lord, I should think not.”

Margaret bites the inside of her lip until she tastes copper.

The mist has lifted when they take their horses, and the weather is only gray over the dark green hills. Margaret is given a black gelding, unremarkable except for his color. She rides at Wulfric’s left, Eadwin on his right, and she thinks no mountain has ever felt so insurmountable as Wulfric is to her now.

The church is on the small side, but clearly quite old. It is not domed in the way of newer Moon churches, though its windows are round and plain glass. There are a number of monks about, even in this weather, tending the graves and sealing apparent leaks in the church. When they notice Wulfric, they bow, and sneak curious glances at Margaret.

They leave their horses outside the churchyard, and Eadwin leads them in, though surely Wulfric must be well familiar with the place. The space is vast, lit by dozens of candles so that the flickering light seems to animate the reliefs on the walls, angels descending from heaven and the chariot of the moon rolling across a stone sky. The statue of the Mother is seated, fat and on Her knees the children Sun and Moon. The silks clothing the goddess spill out over the altar, stirring in the drafts. Her tender smile is directed down at the sanctuary, her palms open and extended. Behold, these are the light of My husband’s eyes.

Margaret makes a sign of prayer and watches as Eadwin goes forward to speak to a man a little older than himself. The priest is recognizable only by his deep blue stole, hemmed in white and embroidered with the phases of the moon, crescent to crescent. He nods as Eadwin murmurs something in his ear, and comes forward. “My lord Wulfric.”

Wulfric bows, and Margaret does the same. “Father Algar,” Wulfric says, “may I introduce Lady Margaret Beckett.”

“Welcome, Lady Margaret,” Father Algar says with a nod. “Is there anything you would like to know about our church?”

Margaret asks him a few questions about services—as with many Moon churches, their regular masses are in the evening after sunset, and foregone only during the three days of the full moon. Many worshipers come only at the new and the halves. They speak a while about her prior experience with the church, with the Roses, a conversation Wulfric visibly grows bored of before he excuses himself to go outside.

Eadwin takes half a step closer, lowers his voice as Wulfric leaves. “I’m sorry, my lady, but I advise you not make him wait long.”

Margaret gives a quiet nod, hoping she conceals her disappointment. She thanks Father Algar, and gives one last look to Eadwin, wishing for things she can’t have, and goes to the door to find the man who is to be her husband.

#.

Eadwin

Margaret is hardly out of the door before Father Algar speaks, his voice low and level. “What on our Queen’s blessed earth have you done?”

Eadwin turns away from the door. “Might we speak somewhere more private, Father? I feel I should unburden myself.”

“Saints help you, Eadwin, I pray that I am not about to hear what I think I am.” Father Algar turns toward the back, where his office is.

The office, where Father Algar sees to the church’s mundane affairs and keeps its records, is usually the warmest part of the church. Algar dismisses the young brother who is acting as his secretary, and settles behind his desk with a sigh. He rubs at his eyes as Eadwin sits down. “Tell me that Lady Margaret is only, unfortunately, besotted and that you did nothing to encourage that.”

“I’m afraid it would not unburden my soul much to lie, Father.”

Algar lets out a long breath. “Very well, tell me what happened.”

Eadwin doesn’t know if he can say that Algar and himself are friends. They’ve known each other long enough, and have never held any animosity for each other, but he isn’t certain how much that counts for, particularly now. He knows it is almost a relief to recount the story in a more honest fashion. Father Algar’s greatest skill as an abbot is his ability to listen in expressionless silence.

“She called it a kindness,” Eadwin says. “I had just seen her try to end her own life, I—” Words fail him. He covers his eyes with a hand for a moment. “It’s almost a madness,” he says. “If I were a more superstitious man, I’d say she bewitched me, but no woman would invite this on herself. Not like this.”

“Tell me that it ends now,” Algar says.

Eadwin is silent. Father Algar curses under his breath. “It is one thing to dally with the servants, Wulfric’s intended bride is quite another.”

“I know,” Eadwin says. “Believe me, it haunts my every thought when my sense comes back to me.”

“I wonder that he doesn’t know already, with the way she looks at you.”

“We have tried to be careful, I am—trying to keep my distance.” Eadwin lets out a breath. “Something I expect she’ll resent me for.”

“Her resentment will be the least of anyone’s concerns if Lord Wulfric takes it into his head he wants to kill you,” Algar says curtly. “We have benefited greatly from good relations with the holders of our lands for three generations, and few are the abbeys that can say that. We do not have the luxury of our more remote brothers and sisters, who operate with very little interference. Wulfric’s contributions are the primary reason we have been able to—”

“Keep the church from falling down around our ears, yes, I know,” Eadwin says. He is not usually on the receiving end of this speech. Quite often he is the one giving it, to justify how much of his time is spent in the castle. “And certainly if Wulfric decided he wanted to be rid of me it would cause an incident, but it’s not me I’m worried for, or this church.” Margaret has nowhere else to go, if he turns her out. “She took her dagger back from me. If Wulfric tries to send her back to Grenacre I do not think she would leave it up to chance whether or not she survives.”

“And then her blood will be properly on your hands,” Algar says. “So what do you intend to do about it?”

Eadwin had been hoping for a little more guidance, but evidently that is not coming. “I don’t know.” He gives Algar a grimace. “I don’t know. I don’t think I could bear to leave her without any friends here.”

“What she wants from you is a great deal more than friendship.”

“I love her,” Eadwin says, the first time he has allowed himself to truly acknowledge it, “and I know that makes me no less a fool.”

“If anything it makes you more of one,” Algar says, and he sighs. “I get the sense that it would be a waste of my breath and our time to browbeat you into making promises you won’t keep.”

“If there is some penance I could do—”

“Assigning you a penance will draw rather more attention to this situation than I would prefer.” Algar takes his cap from his head, running his hand back over his thinning hair. “This is the agreement I will make with you—you will handle this affair on your own. You will not bring it into this church, or into the abbey. If it comes to it, I will do what I can to see that you both are protected from any physical harm—but you will lose your place in this abbey and this order, Eadwin.”

Eadwin lets out a breath, and he nods. “I understand.”

Algar was there when Eadwin first came to the abbey, has known him ever since. He knows what it means for Eadwin to accept this risk, accept it without hesitation or argument. Algar grimaces, and nods.

“Well,” Algar says, clapping his hands to the arms of his chair. “Will you be with us for dinner and mass?”

“Yes. I told his lordship not to expect me.” Though he wonders if he should have now, thinking of Margaret bearing that first dinner alone. Father Algar nods again, and stands. “Take what rest you can, then, Brother. Dusk comes sooner than you think.”

Eadwin makes the walk back to the abbey, hoping it will clear his head. The brazier in his cell is lit, so someone saw him coming. He takes a moment to warm his hands and removes his cap, scrubbing his face with one hand.

There’s a knock on the door, one of the boys bringing him a steaming pot of water. “They said you’d want water for washing.”

“Thank you, Hawthorn,” Eadwin says, taking the pot. “I’ll not need anything else until dinner.”

He takes everything off, setting the clothes aside for laundry. He pauses, touching the blood stain on his linen. He’ll be asked about that, he’s sure. He rubs it between his fingers, thinking how ghastly white Margaret’s cheek was against that bright hair. Thinking of her nervousness that first night, and the way she whispered his name when she was ready. Would you make me a cathedral?

Washed and in fresh clothes, Eadwin sits on his bed and considers the icons on his wall. The Queen of Heaven, the Moon in his silver chariot, Saint Luce Matragracia who was credited with founding the Order of the Moon, with developing the elixir that opened the soul to the Heavenly Queen by removing the obstacles imposed by pride. Saint Luce who stands with her lantern and her chalice. Thirty-two years of his life he has spent in this abbey, thirty of them as a vowed brother.

“Mother forgive me,” he whispers, “I’ve not been among your best servants, but I’ll give it all up if she needs me to.”

He keeps to his cell until the sun begins to sink, and he needs to return to the church to prepare for mass. Eadwin takes it upon himself to shepherd the boys, who can be easily distracted—particularly by gossip now that it’s said he returned from the south with a beautiful woman they’re all expecting to see.

“Is it true, Brother?” Eadwin doesn’t even know what he’s meant to be confirming.

“What’s true is that you’ll be scrubbing the entire abbey top to bottom if you cause any sort of embarrassment,” he says, sternly. “No staring, and do as you’re told.” Saints and angels, was he ever this young? It seems to him they receive fewer young men, and more and more children. Younger sons of noble houses and wealthy families, orphans and church-raised foundlings who won’t have a surname of any kind until they take their vows.

It all ought to be ordinary. It ought to be the same kind of mass he has performed nearly every evening for thirty years. In large part it is—but for the fact that the world has shifted beneath his feet. The center weight of the sanctuary is no longer the Holy Mother, but Margaret, sitting front and center.

Wulfric has come with her, of course. Eadwin is rather of the impression that the lord’s zeal has run its course in his absence, but Wulfric will feel called to attend with her for at least a few days. Margaret sits with her hands in her lap, beads wrapped around her hand like she might draw some kind of strength through them. The candles light her up like a bonfire.

It’s almost a madness, he said to Algar, and yes he feels a bit mad. It will do him good to partake of the next moon mass. Surely the Mother won’t cloud his head anymore than it has already been clouded.

The poems are read, the hymns are sung and the offerings made. Mother of the World, She Who Is the Darkness and the Light, Guiding Star of the Lost. Sandalwood incense distracts him. Prayers are given, and Eadwin begs: please let her be safe. Please forgive me for bringing her here.

Wulfric lingers for a moment as the church empties, only long enough to say, “Will you come early tomorrow? Wulfwyn would like to see you.” Over his shoulder, Margaret presses the rose medal of her prayer beads to her lips, facing the altar with her eyes shut and a crease between her brows.

“Of course, my lord,” he says. “Sleep well, I will see you in the morning. My lady.”

Margaret’s cool gray eyes lock on his for just a moment. The brief parting of her lips, like she wants to speak, and then the press together as she stops herself. She nods, and follows Wulfric.

There is the extinguishing of candles, the sweeping up to oversee. Eadwin carries one of the lanterns and a smaller boy who fell asleep as they make their way back to the abbey, the cloudy black sky revealing nothing. Lights there need to be put out, fires fed to burn until morning. There is a comforting regularity to it all, particularly after he has been away. And yet—every corner he turns he half expects to find Margaret, or a flash of her hair disappearing ahead of him.

He isn’t surprised that he dreams of her slipping into his cell, dreams of the hot press of her skin and the taste of her mouth and her cunt. He dreams of sandalwood, of taking her on an altar with the cold weight of silver beneath her. He wakes in the dark and thinks, this is the first night they’ve been apart since she first came to his room.

Because he cannot sleep, he lights a candle from the smoldering brazier and begins to write. He is not the first brother to disguise what he is writing for a lover by saying it is about the Heavenly Queen. He will not be the last.

Dawn comes, thin and cold. There is rousing the boys—and those brothers that are old enough they are beginning to slip from old routines—for morning songs. There is breaking fast, with eggs and oats and honey and milk. It is clear enough to walk to the castle, the slip of paper folded and tucked into the breast of his wool overcoat. Black, of course, like the rest of his clothes.

The cows are being let out onto the fields after milking, the sheep and ducks are already out. Eadwin greets the laborers he passes as they acknowledge him, and the wind is beginning to pick up as he reaches the doors. It is all terribly usual.

Even Aethelric is in the place he ought to be: a blanket draped over him by some pitying servant where he laid down drunk on a bench in the great hall. Eadwin is seized by the temptation to wake him by rolling him off the bench. He chooses instead to take the jug of water that has been left on the table and pour it on his face. Aethelric wakes in a torrent of swearing that stops only when he can see straight enough to recognize Eadwin. “That was unkind, Brother.”

“Sleep in your own bed and I won’t be forced to wake you when I come here. Do you remember dinner, or were you too drunk by then?”

Aethelric is coherent enough to know what’s being asked of him. “He was perfectly well-behaved,” he says dully, arms slung over his knees. “The lady was miserable, but she was doing a good job of trying to hide it. I can’t blame her. Everard’s taken to her already, Wulfwyn has forgiven her for existing, I think, if not for being betrothed to Wulfric. Mildred cried for her mother.”

“Thank you,” Eadwin says, pouring the remaining water into a cup and thrusting it at Aethelric. “Go to bed, for the love of Heaven, and bathe before you start drinking again.”

“Yes, Mother,” Aethelric replies sulkily.

“Who is it this time, by the by?” Eadwin asks, gesturing the blanket. “I can’t imagine you’ve kept it up with the horse master while I’ve been away.”

“Why not?” Aethelric asks, pretending at offense. “Anyway, no, it’s that girl that keeps the hearths.”

“Be responsible enough that I’m not blessing any of your bastards,” Eadwin says.

“I’m not suited to fatherhood, even of that variety,” Aethelric replies. “If she chooses to keep a brat that’ll be her burden, I won’t lead her into thinking I’ll give her anything I won’t.”

At this time of day, Eadwin thinks, Wulfric will be taking breakfast in his private chambers. He’ll want to know that Eadwin came as asked.

He makes his way up, and he would wait to have a servant tell Wulfric he’s there, but he meets a woman coming out. It takes him a moment to recognize her as the maidservant that was with Margaret the day prior. She meets his gaze and her face flushes scarlet as she hurries off with a murmured apology.

Eadwin takes a moment to rein in his temper, and steps inside. Wulfric is eating as expected, only half dressed. “Ah, you’re here.”

“Do you know this one’s name, my lord?” he asks, cool.

“Hm? Oh, Bramble. What of her?”

“It seems you might have set her aside for a night or two after the arrival of your betrothed.” Or that perhaps he might leave the serving girls alone entirely, and stop prowling among them like a wolf in a fenced deer park.

“I realize you’re sworn to a certain degree of discretion, Brother, but the rest of us are ordinary men leading ordinary lives.”

Big words, Eadwin thinks, from the man who insisted he had found a new ardor for faith. “I trust Lady Margaret was undisturbed?”

“Of course, I’m not my brother.” Wulfric takes a drink. “She seems the prudish sort, anyway.”

Eadwin chooses silence, turning to consider the window. “Does my lord have any need of me or shall I look for the children?”

“They’ll be with Lady Margaret, I expect,” Wulfric says. “She said she would get them to the shrine for their prayers after breaking fast.” Eadwin nods, and bows. “My lord.”

The castle shrine is kept near the gardens, for ease of sweeping out any dirt and bringing in flowers in the summer. Its statue is a miniature of that in the church, carved of marble and inlaid with gold and mother of pearl.

He finds Margaret with her head bent, Mildred in her lap, helping her through a children’s book of prayer. A stray lock of hair curls down her neck, and Eadwin has to consciously still his hands, standing in the doorway. At the ceasing of his footsteps, Margaret looks up, and falls silent. The children notice him.

“Brother Eadwin,” Margaret says, her voice strained. “How good to see you.”

“His lordship wished me to collect the children for their lessons,” he says, “but I wondered if I might speak to you privately for a moment.”

“Of course,” Margaret says, gently lifting Mildred from her lap. “Stay here, please,” she says to the children, and they step out into the garden, where they might have a better idea of how many listening ears are about. Margaret hugs her arms across her chest, against the wind.

“How did you sleep?” Eadwin asks, soft.

“Hardly at all,” Margaret says. “I kept thinking of—” She stops, digging her fingers into her arms. “I wish you were closer,” she whispers.

“How was dinner?”

“Wretched. I wished I could be half as drunk as Aethelric was.” She purses her lips. “Whatever he might have said when he sent you out, Lord Wulfric has wholeheartedly lost interest in my piety. Is he so unpleasant even guests will not stay in his house?”

“It’s the climate. Few are the people who would desire to winter in Eagletop if they do not have to. His guests will come later in the spring, for the summer hunting.”

Margaret grimaces, fidgeting with her necklace. A single pearl on a gold chain.

Eadwin lets out a breath and pulls the paper from his coat. “I wondered if you might look over something for me, tell me what you think.” He offers it to her. “There comes a time when I can no longer trust the opinions of my brothers, who either know my work too well or think they can’t afford to offend me.”

Margaret looks puzzled for a moment, and reads the first few lines. Her cheeks grow a bit pinker, and she folds the paper again, tucking it into the bodice of her dress. “I’ll be happy to read it over tonight.”

Eadwin looks at her and imagines tucking that lock of hair behind her ear, pressing his lips to her neck.

“Brother,” Margaret says before he can turn to go inside. “If a woman wanted to… pray in privacy, where would she do it?”

Eadwin glances at the sky. “If the weather holds,” he says, “the gardens are very quiet in this season. Especially if his lordship goes riding.” And if the weather holds, Wulfric will go riding.

“You don’t think he’ll want me to accompany him, do you?”

“Not now, I think,” he says, “while you are not yet his wife. He might surprise me, after that.”

Margaret nods. “I’ll let you get back to the children, then. Thank you, Brother.”

Eadwin nods. “Anything for my lady.”

#.

Margaret

She watches the sky all morning like a restless hawk. She steers clear of the children’s lessons with Eadwin, taking time instead to arrange her new chambers more to her own liking. Wulfric must have made her a dozen grand promises, for silk gowns and jewels and golden hair pins, new down pillows and maids whose only duties will be to attend to her. Perhaps if she weren’t raised by her father, perhaps if she weren’t warned by Eadwin, perhaps if Eadwin didn’t occupy her mind so intensely, she might be taken in by those grand promises.

As it is, she mistrusts them. There will come a day when Wulfric no longer feels the need to try and win her favor, and she fears it will be the day she weds him.

She watches the sky, and the weather holds dry and just a shade too cool to be inviting. She watches as Wulfric goes out riding, his brother and several of his men in attendance. She tells Bramble she’s going out for a walk around the gardens, that she will be back shortly. That she isn’t to be disturbed.

The garden is densely planted, and rhododendrons and hydrangeas swell high and thick inside the walls. The trees are just going out of bloom, their leaves coming in thick and bright. She finds a secluded stone bench behind a wall of roses just beginning to bud from which she cannot see the house, and it is there that Eadwin finds her. He is good about making it seem he is there on some aimless stroll, but when his eyes light upon her he smiles, and Margaret rises to meet him.

His hands cradle her head when he kisses her, so fiercely it knocks the breath out of her. Margaret plunges her hands into the folds of his coat, pulling him close to her.

“When I couldn’t have you last night,” she whispers, “I put my hands between my legs, and imagined you were there with me anyway.”

He’s kissing her throat, a hand sliding down to cup her breast through her bodice. “What did you imagine?” he breathes, and her skin prickles.

Margaret traces her fingers over his lips, which part and almost invite her in. “I thought of your hands,” she says, “your mouth. Thought of you bending me over the writing desk and fucking me ragged.” She keeps trying to provoke him into being a little rougher with her, and he keeps resisting.

“Why the desk?” he asks, his hand skating down the front of her skirt and beginning to pull it up. The cool air makes her the skin of her legs prick.

“Because I wouldn’t let you have me in another woman’s bed.” She clutches the front of his coat as his fingertips slide up her thigh.

“In a garden,” he murmurs, pressing his fingers between the folds of her cunt to stroke her, “in an alley, but not there.”

“No,” Margaret breathes, “not there.” She leans into him as he touches her, smothering her moans in the wool of his habit. His other hand is tight on her backside, holding her hips in close.

“I dreamed of you,” he says as her fingers slide up the back of his neck. “Ached for you so badly I woke and couldn’t sleep again.”

Margaret sucks in a breath, whimpers against his chest. “I need you,” she whispers. “Oh, I need you, I need you, I need you.”

There are birds singing in the trees, falling quiet when a hawk swoops lazily through the air.

She kneels on the bench for him, the air cold on her skin, and he has to press his hand over her mouth when he’s inside her. She pulls her breast from her bodice to bring his other hand to it, reaching back to grasp a fistful of his habit. Perhaps she can make a life here, as long as she has this. Fumbling around fabric and rolling against each other, Margaret thinks she can understand why the Queen of Heaven never diverted Her attention while Her husband lived, if Their love was anything like this.

Afterward, as they put each other carefully back into place, Margaret pulls him down to kiss him again. Eadwin looks at her softly, stroking her cheek with a thumb. “We should be able to speak inside, if we take care.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be seen leaving the garden with you.”

“No, I think not.” He lifts her hand to kiss her fingers. “The hearth in the great hall is always a place to converse without raising suspicion.”

Margaret nods, squeezing his hand. “I expect to see you there, Brother.”

“Of course, my lady.”

She takes care not to seem too purposeful as she leaves the garden, drawing her shawl close about her shoulders against the cold. She means to make some excuse to take herself to the great hall (thinks she might ask the kitchens to make something hot for her to drink) when a hurrying maidservant sights her around the corner and comes running down the corridor. “M’lady,” she says, with a quick bob. “There’s a man here wants to see you. He says he’s your brother.”

Margaret’s stomach drops to the floor. “Did he give his name? Did he say why?”

“Henry, m’lady, though he said to tell you Harry was here. He didn’t say why, m’lady. He’s waiting in the great hall.”

Would Harry drag her back to their father? She doesn’t think so, and yet—she can’t bear the risk that he might. She twists at her hands, feeling her breath pick up pace, wondering what she should do. She can feel the weight of her dagger secreted in her sleeve. “Brother Eadwin is still here, is he not?” she asks. “Find him, I won’t go alone.”

“Yes, m’lady,” she says, and hurries off to look. Margaret sits down just inside the door, feeling as if a great weight is settled on her chest and fighting for breath.

It takes a few minutes, but when Eadwin finds his way inside and sees her face he apparently forgets what act he’s supposed to be keeping up. “What’s wrong?” he asks, coming to take her hands.

“My brother is here,” she says, “and I don’t know why.”

Eadwin nods, and his hands tighten on hers. “My lady, I will not be letting you out of my sight.”

He thinks she means to harm herself again. “That is what I want. I’ll go to meet him, I just—I can’t face him alone.” She stares at Eadwin, pleading.

Eadwin nods, and hearing footsteps swiftly releases her hands. Another of the servants, he sees the two of them standing together and nods. “I’ll tell the others you’ve found him, my lady.”

Margaret nods in acknowledgment and looks to Eadwin, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “I won’t go back,” she whispers.

“I know,” Eadwin says softly. “No one will take you anywhere.”

Margaret wishes she could take his hand again, but she clasps her own two together and with Eadwin at her shoulder she starts toward the great hall. She would start to shake, if she weren’t digging her fingernails into her own palms.

Harry hasn’t come alone, Marcus is with him. They both look tired, and she’s surprised to not see Theadora. Harry hardly travels anywhere without her. Both her brothers rise when they see Margaret, and look warily at Eadwin, who stays by the door with his hands folded, silent. For a moment, all Margaret can hear is the wind beginning to groan at the windows.

“What are you doing here?” Margaret asks.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Marcus says. Harry cuffs him on the back of the head, lips pulling back in annoyance.

Harry glances at Eadwin again. “Is that the one who came and got you?”

“This is Brother Eadwin,” Margaret says, gesturing without letting herself look at him. If she looks at him she won’t be able to hold herself together. “He came as Lord Wulfric’s representative and saw me safely here, yes.”

“You could have sent word,” Marcus says. “We come home and we find Father’s sold you away like a horse.”

Margaret’s cheeks grow warm. “What does it matter how he did it if he finally gave me a chance to get free of him?”

Harry and Marcus stew in silence for a moment. This can’t be the only reason they’re here, she thinks. They would have sent her letters, first. They wouldn’t have come all this way just for this.

“Where is Felix?” Margaret asks, because she can’t think of anything else to say.

Marcus stares at the table. Harry lets out a breath. “On his way back to Grenacre,” he says, “with our father’s body.”

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon III.

Falcon Feathers

5.9k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Eadwin

He is a fool, of course. A weak, arrogant fool who stops thinking with his head the moment Margaret smiles at him. She comes down to breakfast the next morning like she’s walking on air, and Sir Laure and Sir Eva greet her ordinarily enough, but both give Eadwin a raised brow over their cups. They know, at the very least. Eadwin can guess from their shared room and begging off evening mass why they might choose to offer him discretion.

It rains, and though the carriage shelters them well enough, Eadwin worries over Margaret’s health in the cool spring air. They are close enough now to Eagletop to take residence in the houses of Lord Wulfric’s friends and kin, today it is his cousin Lady Hild at Barley Hall. The knights take Margaret up to have a hot bath drawn for her, and they sup on beef and fresh bread, spring greens and mushrooms. Lady Hild makes a point of mentioning to Eadwin that the mushrooms were obtained from the order, as he should note by their quality.

He’s almost asleep when Margaret climbs into his bed, not half so frightened as she was the previous night. He can smell the orange peel in Lady Hild’s soap tingeing Margaret’s sandalwood perfume. She straddles his hips to kiss him. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” she breathes, with enough heat that he might almost credit it as truth. “Eadwin, please, I need you.”

And he can’t deny his lady anything.

In the dark, her hands sliding down his sides, she says she’s never had the choice of how she gives herself up before. She’s always belonged to her father and her brothers, and when she arrives at Eagletop she will belong to her husband. “While I have the choice,” she breathes in his ear, “there is nothing I want him to be able to take that I haven’t already given to you.”

She expects Wulfric to take a lot from her, it would seem. She would stay in his bed until dawn if there weren’t the fear of being caught. Not since he was first attending to others during moon mass has he lost this much sleep.

The knights know. Swithin, blessedly, doesn’t seem to.

They spend a day at Barley Hall on Lady Hild’s insistence, and Margaret borrows a bow to show her proficiency—and she is an impressive shot. Meaning it a joke, Lady Hild offers to have her servants toss apples in the air for Margaret to shoot.

Margaret asks for ten. She puts arrows through nine.

Her pride makes her carry herself a little differently, and Eadwin supposes he can see something of what her brothers must be like in the posture she adopts, the way her shoulders pull back and her chin lifts, and she gives an easy smile that makes the posture amiable rather than arrogant. Lady Hild says it’s a pity that Margaret wasn’t born a man, or else Hild might be the one trying to marry her. Something about the sentiment renders Margaret self-conscious, and that swaggering pride disappears. Eadwin grieves its loss.

She should be a man, he thinks. She would be happier.

After midday supper he finds her in the chapel on the other side of the garden, sitting in front of the altar and gazing up at the Queen of Heaven. She looks almost as miserable as she was standing in her father’s hall when he came to ask if Wulfric could have her for a bride. Eadwin sits on the bench opposite, needing the distance of the aisle for some kind of reassurance that he can keep his good sense here.

Margaret doesn’t look at him, but she speaks. “I keep asking myself if this is actually supposed to be the way of things,” she says. “If the Heavenly Mother ever intended for her daughters to be kept like this by their fathers and husbands. If a little bit of blood should really be so fraught.”

Like her cousin, Lady Hild gives her preference to the Order of the Moon, though the representation on her altar is of a slender Queen, long silvery robes falling like water to the stand. Her face is serene, Her eyes hooded and nearly shut. Mother of a Thousand Faces, one poet called her.

“I know my stories as well as anyone else,” Margaret says. “How before the world was made, the Queen and the Lord of Heaven were too preoccupied with each other to create anything else. How the world is only possible because the Lord of Heaven was slain by the Killing Angel, and the Queen transformed his body. None of our stories ever speak of Our Heavenly Mother’s maidenhead.” She says it with contempt.

There is no question in that, so Eadwin thinks it’s better if he remains silent.

“It always used to haunt me,” Margaret murmurs, “the story of the Queen eating Her husband’s eyes to give birth to the sun and the moon. It was the thought of the act I couldn’t stomach. But now what I wonder—the sun and the moon are Her children. Is there anyone who would say they were His?” She looks at Eadwin. “Does it matter to Her whether I’m a maiden or not?”

“The Queen of Heaven is not going to be your husband,” Eadwin says in a low voice. “It will matter enormously to Wulfric.”

“Should I put him before the Mother of Everything?”

“He is the one that would hurt you,” Eadwin replies. Because he does know that—if Wulfric discovers this, neither of them will escape unscathed.

“From the sounds of it, he will hurt me anyway.” Margaret looks back to the altar. “Why are you sitting all the way over there, like I’m some dangerous animal?”

“Because this is a chapel,” Eadwin says, “and it is the middle of the day.” And he can’t refuse her anything.

“I keep wishing for impossible things,” Margaret says. Before he can ask what she means, she says, “Sirs Eva and Laure know.”

“I know.”

“They asked me if I was a maiden before,” she says, “and whose notion it was. I don’t think they were expecting the answer I gave them.”

He doesn’t imagine so. In their position, he would also assume one of two possibilities. He catches himself, sometimes, thinking the scent of her perfume is on his clothes. He isn’t sure if he’s imagining it.

Margaret draws in a breath and sighs through her nose. “How long, do you think, before everything will be ready for a wedding?”

“It will depend on how extravagant Lord Wulfric wants it to be, I suppose,” Eadwin says. “There will be a feast to consider, and guests.” Margaret gives a soft laugh at that. “The church will have to be made ready, and that may take additional time. The spring mushrooms will be coming up, much attention will be turned toward that. His lordship will need to ensure that he has gifts for you, and suitable clothes for his household. It is likely he began preparations as soon as he received my first letter, so—perhaps a month, or a little longer.” That would let it fall squarely between moon masses, so that neither preparations or the work of cleaning up afterward would interfere.

“Will it be trouble if there’s no dowry?”

“Wulfric does not like to feel as though something has been taken from him. After a wedding, a dowry can be fought for in court.” Lose Margaret, and he loses whatever small gain he might have from her father. It won’t be the value that matters, of course—it will only matter that Wulfric won what was owed him.

“How should I greet him? Should I be calm and reserved, or effusive in gratitude, or…” She trails off, watching his face. “It does bother you, doesn’t it?”

It does, but he cannot say that. He has made enough of a mess for the both of them already.

“Smile for him,” he says. “Let him kiss your hand and be flattered when he remarks upon your beauty. Say that I did not prepare you for how beautiful Eagletop is, how grand the house. If he asks what you would like to see first, say the church. If he offers you rest, take it. When he introduces you to his children, remark upon how handsome they are. Do not compare the son to the father, however well you might intend it. And if you can help it—don’t look at me at all. He should think I’m beneath your notice.”

Margaret looks down at her hands, at her prayer beads trailing over her fingers. “I ought to have been a nun,” she murmurs.

“You could take the veil, if you wished,” Eadwin says. “I could not stop you.” Would not.

“No,” she says. “Then I would lose you entirely.” She tucks her beads into a pouch on her belt and stands, making a sign of prayer before the altar. She comes round to Eadwin, and bends to kiss his cheek.

“I keep having the strangest dreams,” she murmurs as she straightens. “In them, I keep finding myself in your clothes.”

#.

At dinner Eadwin gets the sense that Lady Hild is trying to determine what sort of creature Margaret is. She asks about the family, of course, about Grenacre’s size and wealth. Margaret handles these questions deftly enough, seemingly at ease in the knowledge that this marriage looks like ambition. There are worse things to be than ambitious.

“And how did you come to be such a fine archer?” Lady Hild asks, as though she’s looking to pin down something, perhaps a reason for disapproval.

“My brothers liked to have a plaything to teach,” Margaret says. “It was a novelty for them, a girl who hunts.” She gives a thin smile, concealing some old bitterness. “My nurse complained that they were making me half feral. They weren’t quite so indulgent as she imagined—when we playacted they always made me be the princess who was rescued, and never let me be a knight or a thief.”

“Did you come round to playing princess?”

Margaret makes a noncommittal gesture. “I suppose one must.” Hild gives her a strange look.

When all is dark and quiet and Margaret comes to his room she is moody and quiet. She stands at the window and stares out at the waning silvery moon sinking to the western horizon. She looks half a ghost, caught between worlds with her face in shadow and the candlelight on her hair. Half a fiery angel.

“I think sometimes I’m a failure as a woman,” she says. “At least as a lady.”

“I think I’m the wrong person to reassure you.” He’s preparing a message to send ahead to Father Algar, to say he would like to speak privately as soon as possible after he arrives.

Margaret comes to the desk, running her fingers over his hair. He loses the thread of his thought and has to read back to guess what he was saying. “How did you come to be a monk?” she asks.

“That,” Eadwin says, “is a very dull story.”

“Tell me anyway,” she says. “You know more of my life than I know of yours.”

He looks up at her, her anxious eyes searching his face. He lets out a breath and lays down his pen. “My lady,” he says, “I was as good as born in the mud of the Penbreak to a butcher father and a brewster mother. My hands are as at home in the guts of an animal as on a desk. My father liked to fight, so long as he knew the other person couldn’t win.”

Margaret says nothing, but lets her hands come to rest on his shoulder.

“I was their only son,” he says. “I had two younger sisters. One’s since passed.”

“Only son?” she asks, surprised. “And you left?”

“There was nothing left there that I wanted,” Eadwin says. He won’t tell her about Charlie Rees. “I got free of my father and I did what I could to keep myself fed and clothed. The thing I was best at was fighting.”

She gives him the quick once-over he’s become accustomed to when he mentions that part of his past, taking in his lean frame with a skeptical eye.

“I won’t tell you I was ever built better than this,” he says, “but I was fast, and young, and I was angry.”

Margaret nods.

“You get tired of having your eyes blackened for you and waking up the next day feeling worse than when the fight was over,” Eadwin goes on. “I wanted something easier, and I thought I could get by at least for a while claiming I wanted to join the order. Then I went through my first moon mass.”

He falls silent long enough for Margaret to lean forward a little. “Did you see Her?” she asks, her hands tightening on his shoulder. “I’ve heard people do.”

Eadwin nods. “I did. And it…” It isn’t for nothing that they speaking of what you saw in the mass profanes it. Trying to describe an encounter with the Queen makes it small, traps it in words that will never be adequate to explain the experience. “It changed me,” he says. “In ways only the people who knew me before will ever be able to really appreciate.”

Margaret stands in thought for a moment. “Will I be able to go to a moon mass before the wedding?”

“I should think so.” If she’s having second thoughts, he wishes she would commit to them now.

Margaret bends to kiss his temple. “Will you come to bed?” As if they’re something more than illicit lovers. “In a moment.” He takes one of her hands to kiss her fingers. “If my lady can wait for me.”

Margaret lifts his face and kisses him in a way meant to be distracting. “If my devoted priest can bear to make me wait.”

He does not make her wait long.

She sits astride his hips, shifting until she finds what she likes best, her long hair trailing against his chest.

It had long been a popular subject among the clergy, though far less so among the people, to litigate the proper relations between a man and his wife. Eadwin had often found it to be a useful measure for how unbearable the writer would be in dinner conversation. He thinks of it because he had sat dinner with Father Eberhard while a particularly unpleasant brother named Friedrich Reginadora of Berk had been residing in their abbey for a time. Eberhard had made a special project of Eadwin, and said he deemed that Eadwin’s education had come far enough for him to sit with such a learned scholar as Brother Friedrich.

Friedrich was preoccupied with proper marital relations a great deal more than Eadwin thought was reasonable of a man who had forsworn women and doubtless had no trouble keeping that vow, as he was such profoundly unpleasant company. At a dismissive remark from Eadwin, who refused to speak preciously about something so ordinary as a tumble in the sheets, Friedrich had gone scarlet and started off on a tirade about how it was never proper for a woman to lay over a man, as the only time the Queen of Heaven was above Her husband was after the Lord was slain, and thus the act was in its nature necrophilic.

Eadwin still isn’t certain if Father Eberhard had intended for him to laugh in the man’s face and ask how he knew about their Queen’s bedchamber, was he there at the time? Eadwin didn’t know what other reaction a reasonable man could have. He did know that the abbot had not appreciated it when he went on, “Brother Friedrich, I assure you that never once when a woman was on top of me did I give her any reason to think I was dead.”

Margaret lays beside him afterward, tracing loops across his chest and belly. “Is there some punishment for breaking your vows to the order?”

“If you hear any remarks about how often I’ve been given floor scrubbing duties, you’ll know why,” Eadwin says.

Her brows rise. “How often have you been made to scrub floors?”

“Not nearly as often as my reputation would have it.” He traces a hand over the bend of her waist and the swell of her hip. “I couldn’t tell you just how I earned that reputation, though I think my proximity with his lordship might have something to do with it. His brother Aethelric is even worse.”

“You have that reputation and he sent you to find him a wife?”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Eadwin asks. “On most of the occasions my brothers have accused me, Lord Wulfric knew me to be busy teaching his children their prayers, or quietly blessing his bastards. Any dalliances with his servants were brief enough to be overlooked.”

“One wonders how pretty the nursemaid is,” Margaret says dryly.

Eadwin laughs softly. “I think you are overestimating the effect I have on women.”

“And what of the effect women have on you?”

Eadwin gazes at her, and traces a knuckle along her cheek. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

On her face he can see that she thinks it’s flattery, and that she very much wants to believe it. He leans in to kiss her temple. “Promise me something.”

She looks at him, grey eyes uncertain. “What?”

“Promise me you won’t be reckless on my account.” He strokes her cheek. “Protect yourself, as much as I’ll protect you.”

There’s a shine of pain in her eyes, and she tucks her head under his chin, a tremble going through her. “You should have lied to my father,” she says. “Should have stolen me for yourself. I would have let you.”

“My lady should allow herself more pride.”

Margaret turns her face against his throat, her breath hot. “What is pride to having you between my legs?”

It’s a provocation and he knows it, but he kisses her anyway. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he murmurs.

“Best hope not,” Margaret says, “because I won’t make a world from your body. I’d sooner ride to Paradise and drag you back out like some legendary heathen queen.”

“I’ve often heard about the insatiability of heathen queens,” Eadwin says, kissing her neck. She laughs.

After she leaves this chamber it will take him two days to realize that the dagger he took from her is gone. When he asks, she won’t even pretend at innocence, and neither will she hand it over.

“It was a gift from my brother, and it is mine to keep, for whenever I may need it.”

He just hopes she won’t need it.

#.

Margaret

Sir Laure offers to let Margaret ride in the saddle with her, because the day is bright and clear. Margaret would prefer to ride in her own saddle, but she’s tired of the carriage, and she’s warmed somewhat to the knights now that they keep her secret.

“Can I ask you something, my lady?” Laure asks as they ride just far enough ahead of the carriage to be out of earshot. Sir Eva is riding behind, keeping pace with Swithin. Laure has a deep voice for a woman, and Margaret finds it soothing.

“I won’t promise I’ll answer,” she says, guessing the direction of this query.

“Do you love him? Or is it a pleasant diversion?”

Pleasant is such an underwhelming word for what she has with Eadwin. “When I’m with him, I lose all sense,” Margaret murmurs. “I don’t know that he’s much better.” He didn’t seem to notice at all that she made him no promise.

Sir Laure lets that hang in the air for a moment. “Do you know why there are women in the Knights of the Sun?”

“Because without a Church Father there’s no one to stop you, and you won’t sire bastards on nuns?”

“Well, that too,” Laure says. “But there’s a story of a knight and the lady who loved him so much she disguised herself as one of his brothers for near ten years before she was discovered. By that time, she had become so well respected, so beloved by the men she had led through battle, that they would not stand for her being tossed out in disgrace or otherwise punished. She was instead given the means to train other women. Saint Fernanda, one of the matron saints of our order. Of course the stories also say she was wholly chaste, but I cannot fathom the woman who does what she is said to have done without bedding her lover.”

“Doesn’t seem terribly applicable to me,” Margaret murmurs.

“I mean only to say that there are women who have done it.”

“Do you think I would make an especially convincing man, Sir Laure?”

“Well, I won’t say I haven’t noticed your two most significant impediments,” she says with half a smile. “But you’d be surprised what people miss when your hair is cut.” Sir Laure is quiet for a little while, the birds singing overhead as they ride. “Would you be happier if you were a man?”

“What kind of question is that?” Margaret asks. “Of course I would.”

“What do you mean?” Laure presses.

“No one would own me,” Margaret says. “I could ride and hunt and live as I want and it would be all be ordinary.”

“One can wish to be free without wishing to be a man.”

“One can wish to be a bird, it won’t give you wings,” Margaret replies. “I can wish my mother never died and my father didn’t hate me and the man I love weren’t a monk it won’t make any of it so.”

Laure lets out a breath, one hand on her thigh as the other keeps hold of the reins. “Maybe so. But not everything one might wish for is impossible.” She extends her arm to point to the sky. “Someone’s out with a falcon.”

It takes Margaret a moment to spot it, the slim gray shadow against the blue sky. “My brother Felix once gave me arrows fletched with falcon feathers,” she says. “He said nothing would ever fly so straight and true.”

“And did they?”

“They flew like arrows,” Margaret says. “Their path was up to me and the wind.”

#.

There’s not even a chapel in the village they stop in. The people there keep instead a small shrine, and Margaret can’t work up the enthusiasm to pretend at her prayers when Eadwin takes her there in the fading light. She leans against the old oak tree the shrine is built under and closes her eyes, wishing she could have something like in the stories of the saints—some thunderbolt of clarity, an angel appearing to tell her: this is what you’re meant to do. Some path so obvious once it’s revealed that she couldn’t help but to follow it. Eadwin stands in silence with her for a time as the shadows grow long and deepen into night.

“Do you want to know a secret?” Margaret asks, her head against the tree, face turned up to the dark sky while her eyes are closed against the stars.

Eadwin says nothing, but she can feel his gaze on her.

“I have spent nearly every day of the last—oh, ten years or so—spending my prayers begging the Heavenly Queen to make me into the right sort of woman. To make me fit where I’m supposed to belong, to make me content with my lot, to make me someone my father could be softer to. I pray and I feel like I’m fighting with Her every step of the way, I never feel that sense of awe and wonder and overwhelming love you’re supposed to feel when She’s with you. I never feel the peace you’re supposed to feel after prayer. It’s enough to make me wonder if even She can’t love me.”

“Margaret,” Eadwin murmurs, pained. The first time he’s managed to say her name unprompted.

“The closest I get to feeling the way you’re supposed to feel in worship is when I’m in bed with you,” she says.

Eadwin lets out a breath, and after a moment Margaret hears his footsteps coming across to her. She opens her eyes to shadows, and his fingers meet her jaw, softly drawing her gaze to his.

“Perhaps,” he says, “Our Mother does not want you to be what you’ve been told you should be.”

“Then what should I be?”

“What do you want to be?”

Margaret laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” A falcon. With silvery bright feathers and deadly talons and a ripping beak. A hunting falcon only returns to its master if it’s treated well. “Would you still love me if I weren’t beautiful?” There was an old story of a heathen queen who had a falcon feather cloak, when she put it on she took the falcon’s shape and could fly the length of her kingdom in a day. When her king burned the cloak to keep her imprisoned she killed him, turned his intestines into sinews, and used the cords to stitch a new cloak. Margaret must have read it a thousand times in her father’s library.

It is dark, dark enough to allow Eadwin to stroke her hair, to bend to kiss her jaw. “Even if I lost the sight of my eyes, even in the black of night you will always put the sun to shame.”

She clutches at his habit, aching. “If I had to make this journey,” she whispers, “if I had to go from one cold cage to another, why did I have to taste real warmth with you? I wouldn’t have known better, if it had just been anyone else.”

He kisses her, cradling her head. “I’m sorry,” he whispers against her lips.

It isn’t an alley, but pulling him away from the shrine into the dark trees is almost the same. It’s desperate and animal and Margaret thinks if the Queen of Heaven loved her then she would have been born a man and found her way to Eadwin in the same kind of black wool. Her father wouldn’t have cared to let a fourth-born son into the church.

When they return to the inn, Margaret goes to bed alone, and stifles her tears in her pillow.

#.

They arrive in Eagletop under a misting rain that isn’t quite a fog, though it renders the estate quite grey. Margaret has swallowed down every raw and tender part of herself, emptied herself out so that she can seem pleasant and grateful and unafraid. Before the clouds pulled over the sky like a goose down quilt she saw the moon as a sliver of silver in the morning sky, chasing just barely ahead of the sun like a fox evading the hounds. It will be over a fortnight before it is full and bright again.

Eadwin has left her to sit beside Swithin on the driver’s bench, and Margaret is confined to the dark of the carriage as befits a lady. Swithin has neither looked at nor spoken to her all morning, but as they departed the house they had stayed in she heard him say to Eadwin that he ought to pull that pretty gold hair off of his habit.

Sirs Eva and Laure, once they see Margaret safely delivered, plan to take residence at the abbey for a few days before they return south. Margaret thinks she will miss having them nearby, particularly for how imposing they are in even half armor.

A guardsman is waiting outside, his bow is quick and formal and he never looks her in the face. “My lady. Brother. His lordship will receive you in the great hall.”

Margaret pulls back the hood of her cloak as they step inside the aged oak doors, groaning as they open and shut. On either side the doors are carved in relief of an enormous eagle, split down the middle by their parting.

The ceilings are high and dark, and their footsteps sound loudly in the quiet corridors. Eadwin leads her to the great hall, which is too large to be properly warm unless it is packed with people, which it is not. Margaret steps inside to see three children, and two men which she takes to be Lord Wulfric, and his brother.

Wulfric is of moderate height, dark haired and wearing a trimmed beard. His shoulders are broad and his frame is strong, and he is well dressed in grey silk and gold thread. He looks at her with an evaluating eye for a moment too long before he puts on a pleasant face and tells her, “Welcome, Lady Margaret.”

The brother—Aethelric, she remembers his name—has lighter hair and a clean face. Where Wulfric stands before the fire, Aethelric is lazing over a goblet at the table, perhaps already half drunk. Eadwin has warned her that Aethelric is coarse and rude, but unlikely to be of any real threat to her. He looks Margaret up and down like a sow, and snorts into his cup.

Wulfric comes forward to take her hands, and Margaret gives him a smile and a faint bob of a curtsy. “My lord Wulfric,” she murmurs, “such a pleasure to see your face at last.”

“Not as much as mine at seeing yours,” Wulfric says, lifting her hand to kiss her fingers. “Brother Eadwin did not prepare me for your beauty.”

Margaret laughs softly, her face turning pink for the wrong reasons. It is a lie, she knows. Eadwin has told her nearly everything he wrote in his letters to Wulfric. She resists the urge to glance at Eadwin by focusing her attention momentarily on the golden pin on Wulfric’s breast, an eagle centered with amber. She looks back to his face and fights to hold her smile. “My lord is too kind. I feel wholly out of place, in a house as grand as this.”

“This dusty old tomb?” Aethelric says. “They must keep house terribly in Grenacre if this impresses you.”

Wulfric ignores his brother, and so Margaret takes her cue from him. “You had no further troubles on your journey here?” he asks Eadwin. Margaret’s gaze turns with his, but she aims it past Eadwin’s shoulder, at the window speckled with moisture.

“No, my lord,” Eadwin says. “Have you had any word from Lord Beckett?”

“Oh, yes,” Wulfric says with a false laugh. Margaret knows the sound intimately, and it makes her skin crawl. “He’s accused me of theft and kidnapping. My lady, had he not assented to this when you left?”

“He had, my lord,” Margaret says quietly. “But my father is often fickle, if he thinks I am not suffering enough.”

“And you wish to be here?”

Margaret makes herself look at him, makes herself smile. “I do, my lord.”

Wulfric nods, satisfied. “Father Algar has already been warned of the situation,” he says to Eadwin, “as have my lawyers. Was anyone else there to witness the agreement?”

“Some servants, my lord, but I would not ask Lord Beckett’s own household to testify against him.”

“No, of course not,” Wulfric says with impatience. “His own daughter and a man of the church ought to be adequate.” He puts on that false smile again and rests a hand on Margaret’s shoulder, where her skin begins to itch. “Come, meet my family.”

He introduces the children first. Wulfwyn is a handsome girl, and she looks like her father in everything but her hair, which curls. She stares at Margaret with the cold blankness of a child old enough to both be angry and fear the consequences of making that anger too known. Margaret is courteous to her but (she hopes) not over familiar. This girl’s mother is not even half a year gone, Margaret doesn’t blame her for not wanting her father to take a new wife.

Wulfric introduces Everard naturally enough, but Margaret can hear the disdain. Everard is fidgeting in the way of a boy who would very much like to be clutching something—his dog or his sister’s hand—but has already been warned against. He is too shy to look Margaret in the eye, but he mumbles his hellos. She imagines he must look like his mother, because only in the shade of his hair and eyes does he resemble his father.

Mildred is too young to understand what’s happening, but she takes to Margaret right away, showing off her doll, who wears a dress that matches Mildred’s and has hair made of yellow thread. If Margaret hears correctly, the doll’s name is Cheese.

“And my brother,” Wulfric says with a weary and warning tone, “if you must be acquainted.”

Aethelric gives Margaret a scornful smile. “I hear you’re quite the prayerful woman, Lady Margaret. I’ll be sure to include you in my prayers, since you’ll be calling my brother your husband. I prayed for Anna, too, for all the good it did her.”

Margaret gives him an empty, pleasant smile. “I will pray for you as well.”

Wulfric has a sharp laugh, it makes her jump. “Lady Margaret, you have come such a long way—shall I let you get settled and take some rest?”

“My lord is generous,” Margaret says. “I should like to wash the road off my skin.” Let him think about her body, and while he’s thinking about it let him not notice anything else.

He sends for a maidservant to see her up to the chamber that has been prepared for her, and Margaret digs her fingernails into her palm to keep from looking back at Eadwin as Wulfric asks him, “What kind of lock and key was Beckett keeping her under that I’ve never seen her before?”

She hears, “My lord, I’ve never met a man who so—” and the door falls shut and cuts him off. She feels the loss of his voice like a tear in her skin.

Wulfwyn trails after her, pulling Mildred along impatiently. “Why are you here?” she demands, apparently confident that her father can no longer hear her.

Margaret looks at the girl, twelve years old and full of more grief and rage than she can probably bear. “Because your father sent for me.”

“He doesn’t need a new wife,” Wulfwyn says stubbornly, as if it’s anymore up to Margaret than it is to her. I don’t need a new mother.

“Wulfwyn!” the maid scolds, but Margaret holds up a hand.

She turns to the girl, drawing in a breath. “Tell me about your mother, Lady Anna.”

“Why?” Wulfwyn asks sharply.

“Because you must have loved her very much,” Margaret says softly, “and I am sorry I did not know her. I never even knew my own mother.”

Tears well rapidly in Wulfwyn’s eyes. “He’s putting you in her rooms,” she chokes. “With all her things, except her clothes.”

Queen of Heaven have mercy. Margaret holds out her hand. “Come with me. Anything you want there, you can have.”

Reluctantly, Wulfwyn takes her hand.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon II.

A Woman's Blood

6k | kofi | ao3 | tag

Margaret

She wakes in a church hospital, tired and aching, and it takes her a moment to interpret the slumped black shape at her bedside as Brother Eadwin, bent in what might have begun as prayer but now looks rather more like exhaustion. “Brother?” Her voice comes out hoarse, and quiet.

Eadwin jolts up at the sound, and he lets out a breath when he meets her gaze. “Thank Heaven,” he says, laying a hand on her arm.

Her eyes flick about the hospital. “I’m not going back, am I? Tell me I’m not going back.”

“No, no my lady.” His thumb strokes her arm, Margaret’s not sure he even knows he’s doing it. “Why on earth did you do that?” he asks. “That man never even set foot in the tavern.”

Tears sting her eyes. “I can’t go back. Not when I’m this close.” She had been so frightened, she had felt as though a noose was tightening around her throat.

Brother Eadwin sighs. “Where did you get the dagger?”

“It was a gift,” Margaret says. “Felix gave it to me, when I killed my first stag. I always keep it on me.” Her eyes flit to the bedside table, empty but for a jug of water and a cup. “Where is it?”

“I have it among my things,” Eadwin says. “I admit I am hesitant to give it back to you.”

Margaret supposes she can’t much argue with him from where she is now.

“Wouldn’t it grieve your brother, that you tried to end your life with a gift from him?” Eadwin asks, soft.

“I think he would understand,” Margaret murmurs. She lifts her other arm, looking at the bandages. “Have I delayed us?”

“By a few days, at least.”

“What will you tell Wulfric?”

Eadwin’s hand shifts from her arm to her hand, his fingers curling in hers. “I wrote that you had fallen unexpectedly ill, and I had taken you to a Sun hospital, and as soon as you were well enough to travel again I would send word. I said also that there is a risk of your father reneging, but that it was not in accordance with your wishes. I suspect he will be preparing to marry you soon after you arrive.”

“You don’t think he’ll come here, do you?”

Eadwin shakes his head. “I would be greatly surprised, my lady.”

Margaret lets out a breath and closes her eyes. “I’m so tired.”

“Please try to stay awake long enough to eat,” Eadwin says. “It will be better, if you eat something.”

He helps her to sit up, back cushioned with a pillow, and Margaret eats rabbit stew and warm bread. She does feel quite a bit better, but still weary. Eadwin promises that he will not leave her alone there, and Margaret sleeps without dreaming. She wakes in the dark, and she would have thought she would find Eadwin asleep, but he’s standing to look out the window, the moonlight shining through and painting him in silver. He looks down as Margaret stirs, and bends to speak to her. “Do you need anything?”

She wishes he would kiss her. She knows he wants to. What she says is, “Water.”

Margaret could not wish for a better nurse than the one she has in Brother Eadwin. The sisters of the Sun change her bandages and comb her hair, but Eadwin brings her food and water and reads to her and prays with her. In the dark when all is quiet, he might take her hand, or brush her hair back from her face.

“Eadwin,” Margaret whispers—she can’t call him ‘brother’ for this—“I want to ask a kindness.”

Eadwin is bent close to listen, close enough that Margaret can trace a caress across his cheek. He ought to pull away or ask her not to do that, but he doesn’t. That gives her hope. “Before we reach my lord, will you be the first to take me to bed?”

He does pull back now, to look at her with an expression that is neither as surprised or confused as it ought to be. “My lady?”

“Selfish men can hurt their wives,” Margaret says. “You, I think, would not hurt me, and I need not be so miserable on my wedding night.”

“My lady, I cannot do this,” he says, but there is a hesitation. “My vows—and your reputation—”

“My reputation,” Margaret says with a sigh and a bitter smile. “I am the unwanted, aging daughter of a minor lord, being sent to be the whipping girl of my new husband. What good has reputation ever done me?”

Eadwin winces at ‘whipping girl.’ “If we were discovered, my lady, it would only make things dangerous for both of us.”

“I know how to disguise it,” Margaret says, “a little blade, a little cut to my skin in the dark. He need never know.” The servants whisper that her mother was no maiden when she married Lord Henry. “Eadwin,” she pleads, “I see the way you look at me.”

He won’t look at her now. “My lady mocks me.”

Margaret draws him near. Sitting like this, if they are discovered there would be no denying that their interest in each other goes well past what is proper. “Never,” she whispers. “I could never mock my savior.” She traces her thumb across his cheek. “Saved twice from my father’s house, and once from death. You could save me from this pain, too.”

Eadwin shakes his head. “My lady, I can’t.” But he doesn’t pull away.

Margaret draws her thumb across his lip, and watches it part. She leans in to kiss him, less like the first time’s gratitude and more like a lover. He ought to pull back, he ought to push her away, but he doesn’t.

For a moment he just allows her to kiss him, and then his hand comes to her neck under her hair, and it’s as if a fire surges through him the way he kisses her then. They hear the thunk of a door as a sister comes to check on her patients and they part like guilty children, Margaret’s hands falling into her lap. She smiles at the sister with her candle and says she is well, only roused by a dream. The sister says she expects Margaret will be well enough to leave in a day or two, and moves on to look at the other beds.

Margaret waits until she is far enough away and looks at Eadwin. “Think on what I have said,” she murmurs. “I trust you far more than any husband I haven’t met yet.”

He gazes at her with something like misery and longing, and Margaret thinks she almost has him. She takes his hand, kisses his fingers like she’s seeking a blessing. He takes his hand from hers, and smooths her hair.

#.

Eadwin

He watches Margaret sleep, and her invitation festers like a thorn under his skin. He looks at her, hair fanned out on her pillow, the rise and fall of her body under the blanket like so many rolling hills. He can still taste her mouth, still feel the warmth of her hands.

He doesn’t believe that she really wants him, it’s only that she’s frightened, and perhaps he can believe that she trusts him. He’s the one who’s lovesick like a boy, though he’s been trying to deny it to himself. Even were he not bound by his vows, his commitment to this supposed life apart, Lady Margaret is in every way a woman men like him are not supposed to have.

The son of a butcher and a brewster, from a village that barely warrants a name. A boy who was pulled out fights in the river mud with bruised knuckles and no real skill, just a white hot rage. What does he have now? Oaths to his abbey, oaths to his lord. A longing for a lady promised to that lord because of him. His tongue honed on talking his way out of trouble so that he won’t have to raise his fists. His faith.

He wasn’t really a pious young man when he sought out the order, and he’s sure Father Eberhard knew it. He wanted regular hot meals and a place to lay his head at night. Scrubbing abbey floors seemed a decent enough way to obtain both.

If he stayed for any reason at all, it was that first moon mass. He had to spend the entire day in purification. A salt water bath, no meat or milk in his meals. Prayers so endless he had thought surely no one can be expected to pay attention through all this, least of all the brothers from different orders who had come to the abbey just for this mass.

The brew the brothers prepared was so bitter it was a feat of strength just to swallow down the small amount he was given. He didn’t particularly believe the stories he had heard from the brothers about their experiences with the moon mass. He wasn’t sure he thought anyone could ever really claim to have seen the face of the Queen of Heaven, to have heard Her voice. He thought a great deal of the poetry about it—particularly that which verged on the romantic or erotic—were merely the fantasies of men who had denied themselves one of life’s better pleasures.

He learned.

By the time the moon had risen bright and full over the wall, while those brothers who were leading the mass sang their low hymns, Eadwin had no longer been sure where his body ended and the garden began. He swore—or would have sworn if he had been able speak—that he could feel the creeping of things in the soil, the breathing of the leaves and the grass. The world was made from the body of the Queen of Heaven’s slain husband, they said. Eadwin thought he could hear the godly corpse’s heart beating. A long, slow, deep thud.

The moonlight, silver and cold, shifted and changed in his vision. Became golden. Warm.

He saw Her in the image of the statue over the altar, a beautiful woman nearly as round as the moon itself, clad in silver and cold silks. Her skin was like the night sky, but it shone with a silvery light. She Who Is the Light and the Darkness. When She brought Her hands to his face it nearly lifted him off his feet, though he had thought he was kneeling.

“My son,” She said, Her voice nowhere and everywhere and reverberating through his bones. “My son, you do not need to carry all this weight.”

He hadn’t thought of the rage as a burden until it slipped from his shoulders. He buckled, and it was as if She held him, and when Eadwin came to himself again he was still weeping, his head and his hands pressed to the cool soil of the earth.

He had thrown himself into his devotions after that night, not as work to be completed in exchange for a meal but with a proper fervor. He had submitted patiently to his writing lessons, to the work of the abbey’s upkeep and its mushroom cultivation. He learned his prayers and his hymns, and sometimes he felt Her presence when he prayed, but it was nothing compared to the moon mass, when he unburdened his soul to Her directly.

Eadwin was hardly the only man who often left the mass having wept until he felt there was nothing left in him. It wasn’t something that was spoken of afterward. It was a subject for poetry and private writings, not for the meal table.

He participates in the masses less often these days, oversees them more. He envies those who come to it for the first time, as he watches them encounter Her in a way they never have before.

Watching Margaret as she sleeps, he thinks the only thing that will give him clarity is a moon mass. The moon is just past full now—it will be nearly gone by the time they reach Eagletop, even if they left in the morning. It will take some time for a proper wedding to be arranged, even if Wulfric began when he received Eadwin’s first letter. Of course, there will be more eyes.

What Margaret has asked of him can only wait for so long before the decision is made for him.

She flatters him by calling him a savior. She can’t possibly believe that after he told her what awaits her in Eagletop. She called herself a whipping girl.

Father Algar would forgive him a breach of his vows. The Mother knows, he’s done it before. It’s Wulfric that would be the danger.

He should never have allowed himself to become so embedded in Wulfric’s household. He was sparing the abbot the the trouble, he told himself, and then that he was ensuring Wulfric had good relations with the church, because a lord who didn’t could become so troublesome. Then he told himself that he was doing what he could to protect Lady Anna and her children, for all that his protection was worth.

Now he finds himself wanting to protect Margaret, and he wonders if this isn’t all a fool’s errand, if his vows to live in service to the Heavenly Mother aren’t inherently compromised by his involvement in the Wulfric’s house.

He shouldn’t have allowed her to kiss him again. Shouldn’t have kissed her at all, but whatever his vows and however long he has striven to keep them he is still a living man and Margaret Beckett has the most beautiful smile he has ever seen.

She speaks of her books and her love for riding and hunting and he thinks: I wish I wasn’t doing this to you. I wish I wasn’t bringing you to a man who won’t love you for what you are. He wants to see her at the hunt, pursuing her quarry through the trees. She claims she once shot a stag while her horse was at a gallop, trusting the mare to recognize the press of her knees for direction. She asked, do you think Wulfric will allow me a horse?

Allow. As if the lady of the house should not have her pick of horses. She is too used to being kept leashed. He’s heard there’s an abbey of the Rose that keeps a stable now, so their sisters can more quickly aid those who need them. Even they, with their own vows and restrictions, are more confident in their freedom than Margaret.

He supposes he sleeps a while, in the same chair where he has slept since he brought Margaret here. Near dawn, he goes out to meet with Swithin, who has been moving their horses and carriage from house to house, in case Lord Henry’s men return. He says that they saw the first man back at the tavern the following morning, but nothing since. “Is she nearly ready to leave, do you think?”

“I will defer judgment to the sisters, but there is color in her cheeks again, and she is livelier.” The sisters have been putting a salve on Margaret’s wounds, so that the cuts might not scar too badly. So that if they are lucky, Wulfric might not know. He has only contempt for those that would end their own lives. He would see it as cowardice, rather than desperate resistance.

“I didn’t think she meant it when she said she’d rather die,” Swithin muses.

“No,” Eadwin agrees, “but now that we know just how earnest she is, which route do you think is wiser—the fast one or the less peopled?”

Swithin sighs. “His lordship won’t like delay, and I’d rather blame it on Beckett than us.”

“I won’t let her fall into her lord father’s hands,” Eadwin says, “not if it means this.”

Swithin gives him a look. Eadwin scowls at him. “When you have washed her blood out of your clothes, then you may look at me like that.” He grasps the front of his habit almost without meaning to. There is a stain in the linen beneath that he suspects will never go away.

“Apologies, Brother, I meant nothing by it.”

“Do you suppose it would help us at all to have witnesses about on the more traveled roads?”

“It could,” Swithin says. “But you want my opinion, Brother, we’re at a church of the Sun, one chock full of nuns and lady knights, and Lady Margaret has no chaperone.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Y’might be able to prevail upon a knight or two to get us there safely.”

Eadwin lets out a breath. If his own position is compromised by politics, then the Knights of the Sun have been compromised since their founding. It is a very appealing prospect to a king to have knights which are ostensibly sanctioned by the church, blessed by the Queen of Heaven and her angels.

And in the end, he supposes, he is the pot calling the kettle black.

“I will ask,” he says.

#.

Margaret

She’s lost him. She can come to no other conclusion when she sees that there are two new members to their party.

The women are a decade or more older than her, and when they are not wearing a helm their shaved heads are covered with small white caps that tie under their chins. They walk with a swagger that Margaret both envies and does not particularly associate with holy women. Both of them wear swords, and one of them carries a hammer on her other hip. These are the first female Knights of the Sun that she’s seen up close, and though she supposes she ought to be grateful for their presence, she isn’t.

Eadwin will not give her this one last kindness as long as these knights are with them. Her mood sinks low as they set out on the road again, the knights flanking the carriage on their horses. She watches what she can see of Eadwin’s face and wants to say, I dreamed of you. Dreamed of you in the way I think you’ve dreamed of me. She watches his hands which she’s started to become familiar with, their ink stains and the silver ring, and wishes he would touch her. When was the last time anyone was as soft with her as he is?

She did dream of him, though she hardly knows what all that entails except from her sister-in-law’s sly remarks and the crude jokes of the servants. She knows the basic facts and mechanisms, but not how one negotiates. Not how one does it in a way that can be called love, and that’s what she wants, really. She wants him to hold her like a lover.

He won’t even look at her, though, unless he has to. Not in the daylight, here, with Swithin and these knights around.

Their names are Sir Laure and Sir Eva. Neither of them were raised in this kingdom, they both speak with a slight accent. They’re clearly quite close, and laugh with each other often. Margaret resents them for their good humor, and tries to read, though she can’t focus on the page.

Her father should have put her in a convent, if he liked her so little. At least then her life would not depend on the character of a man.

They stop in a city called Sunhill, and Margaret is surprised when the knights do not accompany her and Brother Eadwin to the church for evening mass. She is grateful for it, though. Now she may have an opportunity to properly speak to him.

Her thoughts are scattered, she hardly knows when to bow her head for prayer.

They stand outside of the church after mass, the sun having slipped away but the night not yet properly dark. Margaret watches the other worshipers leaving. “Why did you ask those women to come?”

“For your safety, my lady.”

She gives him an incredulous look. “You think they will protect me from my father?”

“I think they will protect you from thieves and highwaymen,” Eadwin says. “Unless your lord father sprouts wings, I think we shall be safe from him until we reach Eagletop.”

At another moment, she might giggle, but she is angry with him. More angry than she realized until this moment when they are alone and the strangers around them do not care to pay overmuch attention to an unfamiliar woman speaking to an unfamiliar monk. “If you wished to refuse me you could have simply said no.”

He looks at her as if she’s taken him by surprise, which she resents.

“When my father looks at me he sees only my mother’s corpse,” Margaret says. “My brothers, they see a child they can indulge until they grow impatient of me. My sister in law pities me, and my lord Wulfric has only an imagining of me that you have painted for him in your letters.” She looks at him. “I thought, perhaps, that you actually saw me. Because someone who saw me would at least have the decency to say no to my face.”

“My lady, you misunderstand me.” He lifts his fingers to her jaw, just for a moment, just to make her look at him. “My lady, I have not made up my mind in that regard—but after what happened to you, measures had to be taken for your safety.”

“Which is why you haven’t returned my dagger to me, I assume,” she says, dry.

“Yes,” he says, earnestly. He grasps the front of his habit. “Your blood is still in this wool. Will remain in this wool, until I die and this wool is passed on to someone else and is worn until it is too threadbare for anything but rags to wash the abbey walls.” He presses his hand flat to his chest for a moment, as if he might press her blood against his skin.

Margaret draws in a breath, her heart beating just a little faster in her breast. “Would you tell them?” she asks. “Would you tell them there’s a woman’s blood in that wool?”

The way he looks at her could scorch, if she saw it properly, in the daylight. “I could never speak of something so sacred.”

She feels her lips part, her skin grow warmer. “I would let you have me in an alley,” she breathes. “I would bend over a barrel for you.”

He makes a sound as if she’s wounded him. “You mustn’t say that,” he says. “For you it should be a cathedral.”

“Would you blaspheme for me?” she asks softly, taking half a step closer, turning her face up.

“I think love could never be a blasphemy.”

It’s her turn to gasp. She aches, a terrible ache she’s never felt before. She whispers his name, and his hand lifts, stops, and falls again. “We will be missed if we do not return soon,” he murmurs, but she can hear the heat in his voice.

“What of the kindness I asked of you?”

They gaze at each other in the fading light.

“I…” he says, and falls into silence.

Margaret reaches out, brushes her fingers against his hand. “If I come to you, will you turn me away?”

He gazes at her a long moment, her savior. He takes her hand, bringing it up to kiss her fingers. “I could never refuse my lady anything.”

Margaret feels, for a moment, the way she imagines a queen must feel. She closes her hand over his, and some burden lifts itself from her heart.

#.

When she slips into his room she sees him for the first time without his cap. His hair, cut shorter than any other man she knows, is a little mussed. She has spent so many hours admiring his hands, the line of his jaw, the sound of his voice when he speaks softly to her. This is the first time, she thinks, that she has looked at him and seen the man, complete.

He gazes at her standing with her back against the door, his keen dark eyes cutting through her, and rises from his seat to come to her. “My lady,” he murmurs, “what do you need?”

She presses her head back against the door, turning her face up. “Say my name,” she says. “And kiss me.”

Eadwin traces his fingers along her jaw. “Margaret,” he whispers, and does. His hand is warm on her throat, that silver ring brushing against her skin and her breast heaves as she draws in a breath, aching and wanting and not knowing quite fully what it is that she wants. She slides her hands up his arms to his shoulders, breathing in the scent of him.

He bends further to kiss her throat, and Margaret jumps when she feels his tongue against her skin. She sucks in a breath, her blood racing in her throat, and brings his hand to her bodice. Eadwin lifts his head to kiss her mouth as his fingers slip under her bodice, and he says, “This would be easier at the bed.”

Margaret nods, breathless, and lets him take her there. Eadwin touches the edge of her net, and Margaret looses her hair, letting it spill over her shoulders. He brushes it back and kisses her throat again as he reaches for the lace at the front of her bodice. She feels a twinge between her legs and hurries the undressing along, sighing when his hands are on her breasts, when he kisses her there as though she’s a feast laid before a starving man.

“I think you must not be a very good monk,” she says with a smile.

“You will find I am a perfectly ordinary one.” He grasps her at the waist and then Margaret is on her back, and he’s kissing her and his hand is skating down her skirt and it’s too much—she freezes.

Eadwin pauses, lifts his head. “My lady?”

She frowns at him.

“Margaret,” he amends. “Do you want me to stop?”

“I—” She doesn’t, and yet. “Could you just—be a little slower?” She can hear the overwhelm in her own voice and is embarrassed of it.

He raises his hands, gentle as he lifts her face to kiss her. “May I take this dress off you?”

Margaret pulls herself up, stands to be undressed. Eadwin is patient, removing her clothes one piece at a time. The air is cool, and she shivers. He traces a nipple through her shift, and bends to remove her stockings. His fingers brush down her legs, dangerously close to that part of her. Margaret bites her lip, and thinks she is glad that it’s him, that he can be so patient with her.

Eadwin stands, and Margaret reaches for the woven belt at his waist. He shrugs off his black wool, and in his linens he draws her into his arms, kissing her softly. She is both afraid to be too close to him and longs to crawl under his skin, to become a part of him the way her blood is embedded in his habit, a secret he’ll never be parted from. She traces the faint stain where her blood soaked through the wool.

His limbs are long, but nature has been kind to him and spared him the scrawniness that she has observed in so many long and lean men. This close to him, she can see a scar on his jaw she hadn’t noticed before. She traces it with a fingertip, and Eadwin takes her hand to kiss the inside of her wrist, where there’s just a faint line of a scar.

Love could never be a blasphemy, he says, but even if it were she would gladly be his blasphemy for him. If he were to be her husband, she would never ask the Queen of Heaven for anything more.

“May I?” he asks, taking hold of her shift.

Margaret nods, and Eadwin brings her to nakedness. She covers herself reflexively, and he takes her hands softly to pull her arms away. He kisses her fingers, gazing into her eyes. “May I kiss you?”

She nods, her heart fluttering nervously. A soft kiss to her lips, another to her throat. His hand comes to her shoulder and he asks, may I keep going?

He worships at her breasts, and Margaret thinks she didn’t realize how good this could feel, before he ever gets between her legs. His hands slide down her waist and he presses a kiss to her belly and says to her, may I?

He has her get on the bed as he takes off his linens, and he is slow with her, his hand caressing the inside of her thigh until she parts her legs for him to touch her cunt. It’s the most painfully intimate thing she’s yet felt, and she thinks what is Paradise to a lover who looks at you like that? What is virtue compared to this kind of tenderness? She wants to touch him but she doesn’t know how.

Eadwin slides two fingers inside of her and it is as if something in her bursts. Margaret has to stifle a cry, arching as he strokes her and a pleasure she could never have guessed at breaks over her like a wave. Eadwin holds her way the church windows show the Queen cradling the body of the Slain Lord, and he kisses her as he caresses her and Margaret thinks she would like to never leave this room, never reach Eagletop nor hear of Grenacre ever again. This must be what other women mean when they talk of coming undone.

As the first wave ebbs, he takes away his hand to slide down her body and replace it with his mouth. His hands are hot on her thighs and Margaret whimpers, pressing her face against the pillow. No man has ever seen her naked, and now Eadwin’s tongue is in her cunt and she cna feel the build low in her belly, her breath growing faster until she claps her own hand over her mouth, arching her back as Eadwin holds onto her hips.

He presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh and moves up the bed over her. Margaret tries to catch her breath, and he kisses her with the taste of her cunt still on his mouth. His body is between her legs and she can feel him against her belly and she thinks again of all the stories she’s heard about tears and blood and she thinks it must be obvious on her face because he says her name again. He says, “We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to.”

Margaret looks at him, wondering how a man who has just had his head between her thighs can say that, knowing her husband won’t. “I trust you,” she whispers, which might as well be I love you.

He strokes her hair. “I won’t, until you ask me to.”

Margaret nods, and pulls him down for a kiss. He just touches her, kisses her, his skin hot against hers and she can still feel him against her belly but it starts to send those twinges through her again, that wanting. She runs her hands down his back, her thighs pulling up against his hips. “Eadwin, please.”

He’s careful with her, and it hurts but no tears come to her eyes. Eadwin won’t stop kissing her. He takes her hand over her head, his fingers sliding between hers. Margaret has the impression that he’s listening to her breath, because when it hitches in pain he always slows or draws back a little. With her free arm she holds him close, feeling his shoulders move under her hand.

“Would you make me a cathedral?” Margaret murmurs in his ear, to distract herself. “Would you adore me at the altar?”

“I would build you the grandest cathedral that has ever stood,” he says, his voice rough. “I would give you everything.”

Margaret smiles, tracing a hand over his cheek. “I would still let you have me in an alley.”

Eadwin grasps her hip and gives a low curse, and Margaret squeezes her legs around him as he comes undone, not wanting it to be over just yet, not wanting to let him go. He catches his breath a moment, arms on either side of her, and Margaret wishes dawn would never come. She draws him near as he settles beside her, tucking her head against his shoulder. “I wish you would steal me. Take me somewhere we can’t be found.”

Eadwin kisses her temple, a hand on her hair. “I would have a difficult time keeping you comfortable.” He isn’t taking her seriously, and perhaps he shouldn’t.

Comfort, she thinks, is conditional. “This won’t be the last time, will it?”

“It should be,” he says without conviction. “It would be safer if it were.” He traces a hand over her hip. “There is a Rose physician in Eagletop,” he says, “if you should… need to take care of anything.” Margaret looks at him. “I wish it wouldn’t have to be that way,” she murmurs. “What if I want to have you again?”

“Then it would be best, I think, if you waited until the seed has already taken root. Though I can’t say it eases my mind to advise you on this.” He gazes at her, those dark eyes cutting through her with a perverse gentleness. “This is a dangerous thing you are suggesting, my lady. I will not always be able to talk your way to safety.”

Margaret kisses him. “I don’t care,” she says. “Do you think my husband would make an altar to fuck me on?”

“No,” he says, and that’s all.

“Then I will come back to my most devoted priest,” Margaret murmurs, “who will learn to speak my proper name when we are in bed together.”

Eadwin smiles faintly, and kisses her again. “My lady,” he murmurs. “Margaret.”

Margaret gets up to wash herself and return to her own bed, and she notices the red smear on the sheet. She glances at Eadwin. “We should have laid your habit down, so you could have that, too. It would be a better reason to carry my blood, don’t you think?”

The water and air are cold enough to make her shiver, so she washes quickly. She watches Eadwin wash as she dresses, watches the way he moves. She will think about this sight when she sees him in the morning, think about how he moves under that black wool. And when they stop somewhere for the night, she will climb into his bed and try to memorize how his arms feel around her.

She doesn’t bother to put her hair up. If she’s caught in the hallway, it will be obvious enough what she was up to. She wants one last kiss before she goes.

“Eadwin,” she whispers.

“Yes?”

“Did you mean it? That love could never be blasphemy?”

He strokes her cheek, and his eyes are soft. “My lady,” he murmurs. “I have loved you from the day we first met.”

Her eyes sting and Margaret has to look away. She draws in a breath, and stands on tiptoe for a kiss. He brushes the tear from her cheek with a soft touch, and presses one more kiss to her temple. “Sleep well, my lady.”

“Sleep well, Brother.”

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

Brother of the Moon I.

The Lady Margaret

6.5k | kofi | ao3

CW: attempted suicide

Eadwin

When his lord had asked him if he would serve as a representative, Eadwin had imagined something more in the vein of law or business. He had imagined that Lord Wulfric sought some dispensation from the church to assuage a guilty conscience for an action he had already made up his mind to take, or even that there might be some business with his late wife’s family that needed the intervention of the church so that his lordship might save face—and then his lord had asked Eadwin to go south and choose a wife for him.

“There is no one I trust so much as you, Brother,” Wulfric had insisted. “I must have a pious wife.” What his lordship must have, of course, is a fertile wife of a good family, but Lord Wulfric is lately of a fanatic disposition after the loss of Lady Anna and their newborn son. Eadwin does not expect it to last, but he is Wulfric’s spiritual counsel, and if his lord demands a pious wife then Eadwin supposes he is obliged to provide one.

So here he is, a brother of the Moon in black habit, explaining his position to Lady Catherine. Lady Cat, as she is affectionately called by her household, has held the seat of Wolfwater since the death of her brotherless husband some ten years prior. Her son Morgan is her presumed heir, but it is clear he hasn’t half the iron will of his mother. They are patrons of the Order of the Waves, Wolfwater being one of its rare inland footholds. In addition to her two sons, Lady Cat is also the mother of three girls. The eldest is already married to Prince Richard in the east, but the second is approaching an age where people are beginning to whisper that her younger sister will be married before her, and it is with that in the back of his mind that Eadwin has come to Wolfwater.

“A pious wife?” Lady Catherine asks, her brows rising her hairline. “For the lord of Eagletop? Spare me the fairytale, Brother, I am familiar with Wulfric’s reputation already.”

Eadwin does not need to ask to what she is referring. Wulfric has four bastard children in his house alone, three of which are daughters to the lord’s persistent disappointment. He would like to imagine himself the sort of man who breeds a multitude of strong sons, and he dislikes that he has only one on either side of the marital bed. Young Everard, his legitimate son, is timid and prone to small illnesses, which his lord father disdains openly. The other was born to a scullery maid. “Nonetheless, my lady, it is what he asked me to find.”

“You’ll find no great piety among my daughters, though it grieves me to say it,” Lady Cat says. “It does not grieve me to say that I have no desire to have Wulfric Seward for a son in law.” This is more or less the answer Eadwin has received at the previous houses he had come to on Wulfric’s behalf. In his letters to his lord he says only that they are loath to send their beloved daughters so far from home.

“I don’t envy your position, Brother Eadwin,” Lady Cat says, not unkindly. “I will grant you this advice: take your search to Henry Beckett of Grenacre. He has but one daughter and I daresay the poor thing is as ready to be rid of him as he is of her. She is already twenty-five, and your lord may think himself too good for the Becketts, but she is pretty, and pious enough. They favor the Rose, I believe. Men like to have pretty Roses for brides. She may even consider your lord an improvement upon her father, Queen of Heaven bless the poor girl.”

Grenacre is a small estate, and nearly a week’s journey from Wolfwater with the carriage Eadwin has been obliged to take. Eadwin goes less because of any faith in Lady Catherine’s recommendation and more because he is tired of this, of seeking out girls Wulfric might marry when he has duties in Eagletop, tending to the church with Father Algar.

He finds Grenacre under a fog, the house rising abruptly out of the sheep fields as the driver brings them to the gates. Eadwin thinks he is too old for this, that he would have been better served as the lord’s secretary than his counsel.

He is shown in to a hall with whitewashed walls, because this house is old enough that its windows are quite small, and without the means to rebuild the entire southern face the light must be emphasized somehow. An enormous fire burns in the hearth, and Lord Henry (a man who is both tall and heavily built) seems impatient to have whatever this is over and done with. He is a man with suspicious, darting eyes. There are many things Lord Henry does not like: the weather, that a black-robed monk has come inquiring about his daughter, that Eadwin has come on behalf of Lord Wulfric in particular, and perhaps most of all Lord Henry does not seem to like his daughter.

He had called her in when the subject of marriage was broached, and she lingers as far from her lord father as can be said to be respectful. Margaret of Grenacre is not a tall woman, but she carries herself well, even if she won’t look her father in the eye, or look at him at all if she can help it. She seems healthy, with good color in her cheek, and Eadwin puzzles over the fact that she is not already married. Her teeth are straight, her posture good, and though Eadwin tries to keep his evaluating gaze within the realm of propriety, he is still in possession of eyes and a pulse. She has a good figure, and small estate or no, there’s no apparent reason why she shouldn’t have made a good match eight years ago.

She is clutching a set of prayer beads, set at the end with a golden rose. She will meet Eadwin’s gaze, and her eyes plead with him.

“This spoiled thing could never survive in Eagletop,” Lord Henry says dismissively. Or rather, nearly shouts.

“I survive here,” Margaret mutters, to no apparent reaction from her father. Lord Henry, it seems, does not hear very well.

“My lord,” Eadwin says, “I believe your daughter is exactly the sort of lady Eagletop needs.” He weaves his words carefully, keeping Margaret in the corner of his eye where he can mark her reaction. A subtle nod, a faint frown. Eadwin tells her lord father that he has heard such good words of Lady Margaret, that her kind nature and gentle soul are just what Lord Wulfric needs most after the passing of Lady Anna. “My lord has found his heart called back to our Mother in Heaven,” Eadwin says, hoping it doesn’t sound as false to Henry’s ear as it does to his own, “and I see that Lady Margaret is just as devoted.” At this, Margaret grimaces.

“Wretched thing,” Lord Henry barks, “she’d be a nun, if I were fool enough to let her. Maybe Wulfric can make a proper woman of her.”

Margaret stirs as if given sudden animation, her red-gold hair catching the firelight. Eadwin has to look away from her and her hopeful expression, or his guilt will prove too much for him.

Lord Henry casts his only daughter a contemptuous glance. “Yes, it’s high time she become someone else’s problem. Take her, I will send her dowry after. It will be the last time you cost me anything, you miserable creature.”

“Thank you, Father,” Margaret says breathlessly, nearly throwing herself at his feet. “Thank you.”

Henry shakes her off impatiently and sends her away. He tells Eadwin what her dowry shall be—and Eadwin supposes he ought to try and negotiate but he is impatient to be home, and Lord Henry seems a tiresome man to argue with and if Lord Wulfric wanted better terms he should have sent a lawyer. Eadwin accepts the meager dowry without contest, and when the lord dismisses him he finds Lady Margaret waiting for him in the corridor.

Before Eadwin can speak a word she reaches up to his face and presses a kiss to his mouth. Her perfume smells of sandalwood, like incense they burn in the Eagletop church. “My savior, thank you,” she whispers, tears brimming in her bright eyes. “Please, we must leave before he changes his mind.”

Eadwin grasps her wrists to take her hands from his face and takes half a step back, heat climbing up the back of his neck. “My lady,” he says, when he can find his tongue, “I don’t intend to ride out of here as if I’ve stolen you.”

“You should,” Margaret says. “You should leave immediately, I wouldn’t even pack my dresses. I’d go just exactly as I am now. I’d go without shoes.”

He talks her down to leaving the following morning, and Margaret rushes off with a maidservant to pack her things. Eadwin goes out to tell the driver, and feels rather like he is taking a prisoner from one cage to another.

He tries not to think too much about the soft press of Margaret’s lips, or the brief catch of her perfume.

Eadwin spends an uncomfortable night in Grenacre Hall, and the servants have put Lady Margaret’s things in the carriage before the sun is properly over the horizon. Her father glowers at her over breakfast, and makes a remark that it was wise to send a monk to collect her, or she might not reach her new husband as a maiden. Margaret gazes at her plate and says nothing. No color rises to her cheeks, as if she’s accustomed to this kind of implication.

Lord Henry forbids his daughter to take any of the maidservants, saying she will have plenty of servants in Eagletop. A woman who is old enough to have been Lady Margaret’s nurse parts with her tearfully, but Margaret does not look back once she is in the carriage, as comfortable as Eadwin can make her. It’s not entirely proper, he thinks, to send her without a chaperone.

Margaret leaves the carriage windows open in the fair weather, and the moment they are past the castle gates she lets out a breath as if coming up from deep water, and an enormous smile breaks over her face. She’s radiant when she smiles, her grey eyes sparkling as she looks at Eadwin. “I thought I’d never be free of that awful place.”

#.

They spend the night in an inn along the river. Lord Wulfric’s money buys them a place that’s comfortable, though not perhaps adequate for a lady. Margaret doesn’t seem to notice, however, simply elated to be out from under her father’s roof. Her mood changes gradually as the sky darkens—she becomes quieter, and she glances anxiously at the windows while they eat.

“My lady,” Eadwin says, “what���s troubling you?”

Margaret bites her lip, and hugs one arm across her chest as she picks up her wine. “I keep thinking he’ll change his mind, and send someone to drag me back.”

“Has Lord Henry done that before?”

“Twice,” Margaret says, “when he had agreed to let me stay with my cousins in Ash Crossing.” She worries at one of her fingernails, in danger of ripping it off. “I wish we could go faster, or else that I could hide from him.”

She puts her hands in her lap to still them and looks at Eadwin. She asks what Eagletop Castle is like, she asks about the church and the forests and the city and the villages. Not once does she ask about her prospective husband.

The driver, Swithin, says not a word until Lady Margaret goes up to bed. “Best be careful with her, Brother.”

Eadwin glances at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she’s likely to fall in love with her rescuer before she ever sees her husband,” Swithin mutters over his ale.

Eadwin snorts. “Since when do women fall over me?” In his youth he supposes he had been perfectly average. Now, with his hair beginning to gray and his face becoming lined, his monk’s habit is often sufficient to render him all but invisible. Lady Margaret is half his age, and Lord Henry must have been chasing off dozens of suitors for her to not be married already.

“They get blinded by their gratitude plenty often,” Swithin replies. “Just make sure you keep her properly distant, Brother, that’s all I’m sayin’. Else you came all this way for nothing.”

Eadwin sighs and considers the last third of his ale. He is glad Swithin didn’t see Margaret kiss him, though he can’t credit it as anything more than a woman relieved to see a chance at freedom. “I had better send a letter to his lordship, tell him I’ve met with success.”

Swithin nods. “Make sure you emphasize how excited she is to come north.”

Eadwin does just so, and because he is sure Wulfric has little if any knowledge of the Becketts, he says that she is twenty-two (an easy enough lie to claim as an error if he’s caught out). He is sure to speak of her brothers, as Lord Henry mentioned they were hunters and the sort of sons a man could be proud of (in contrast to his only daughter). He says that the blessings of the Heavenly Queen shine out through her face (Wulfric will read this as the endorsement of her good looks that Eadwin intends it to be). He says she is everything a pious young lady ought to be.

Eadwin sends his letter out before breakfast, and they depart the inn shortly afterward. Without a maid to dress her, Lady Margaret has opted for a simple jade green dress, and her hair in a net. Most ladies would have one decorated with pearls or gems, but Margaret’s net has no such adornment. It is of gold thread, but that is all. She has a book in her lap, but she hasn’t opened it, she keeps watching the countryside roll past, beaming as if it is the first time she has seen the world beyond her father’s house.

She cranes her neck as they draw near a standing stone, and as they pass it she says, “That’s the end of my father’s lands.”

She prays her beads and hums to herself as the sun climbs higher in the sky. The day is clear, but remains cold. Summer has not quite reached them yet, and Margaret pulls a wool shawl from her things to wrap around her shoulders, though she won’t close the windows. Her round cheeks turn rosy in the cold air, and Eadwin has to remind himself to look back to the road.

Swithin says there’s talk of the king going to war, which Eadwin hasn’t yet heard and so doesn’t give much weight to. If the king were earnest about war, Wulfric would certainly be champing at the bit for it. If there is anything in which Wulfric cannot be criticized, it is his zeal for fighting down among his men, not in any especially protected fashion. It is for that reason that he has a number of nasty old wounds, and a host of men who fought with him who still adore Wulfric as a leader. His lordship imagines himself to be like the warrior kings of old—owed his seat not because of his birth but because of his valor.

Perhaps, Eadwin thinks, that is why poor Everard suffers so much. The boy could use a new mother to soften the worst of his father’s cruelty.

For want of conversation, Eadwin asks Lady Margaret about herself. He learns that she loves music and dancing—neither of which her father permitted her to participate in where he could see or hear. One of her brothers taught her to ride, and when Lord Henry was not about she would often go hunting with her brothers. She shot down her first stag when she was sixteen. Eadwin cannot decide if Wulfric will like this or not—hunting is one of his favorite occupations, but it not one commonly shared with women. A woman might ride along, but it is not expected that she’ll take anything.

Margaret volunteers the source of her father’s animosity for her. Her mother was a stoic and quiet woman, from everything she has heard. Margaret herself never knew the mother for which she was named, because the elder Margaret died of fever shortly after birthing her. This, she says, is the first thing for which her father can never forgive her—the second is that she looks and behaves too little like her mother, and too much like him. He says she is too loud, too bold, and worse—she cries too freely. She ought to secret herself away, cry in private.

Margaret communicates all this with an undercurrent of disdain for her father, but all Eadwin can think of is her anxious fretting at the inn, fearing that her father would appear like a wraith in the night to drag her back to her prison.

“Were your brothers at Grenacre, my lady?” Eadwin asks. He saw not one of Lord Henry’s sons, he is sure.

Margaret shakes her head. “Harry went with his wife Theadora to visit her family, and Felix and Marcus went with him. I imagine they’ll not know I’m gone until they return—as long as I manage to stay gone.” She glances nervously back down the road.

“You wouldn’t like to write to them?”

“Not until I’m safely in Eagletop, no.”

Eadwin thinks few are the people who would call Eagletop a haven. There’s his guilt again. He feels he ought to warn her. Ought to tell her that it is not a kind and gentle husband he is taking her to.

One is not supposed to speak ill of one’s lord. One is certainly not supposed to interfere with the bride one has chosen for him.

Eadwin touches the moonstone amulet at his breast, worrying it between his fingers as he silently asks the Queen of Heaven to watch over Margaret, and to forgive him for what he is doing to her. He will have to speak to Father Algar.

Eadwin had never meant to become close to Wulfric or his household. Certainly he had never meant to become so essential to his lordship that he is considered Wulfric’s trusted spiritual confidant, over even Father Algar, who at least would have enough authority for their relationship to seem natural.

What Eadwin suspects Wulfric likes about him is that Eadwin knows how to turn a silence into whatever Wulfric wishes to hear. He need not say that of course the Heavenly Mother will bless him with the sons he so dearly desires if he takes a more pious wife, Wulfric has already come to that conclusion and all Eadwin need do is keep his silence. He thinks, sometimes, that he should have left for a more remote holding. He would not be concerned with the activities of the Lord of Eagletop if he dwelled in some small monastery on a mountainside, gathering the rare lichens and mushrooms the Order has not yet managed to cultivate at more pleasant climes and writing incomprehensible poetry about the glory of the Heavenly Queen Who is the Light and the Darkness.

He need not be thinking about sandalwood perfume and rosy lips.

#.

They stop at an abbey of the Rose which provides accommodations to travelers, and Eadwin is pleased to see that Lady Margaret asks first where the chapel is. He finds her there lighting a scarlet taper at the altar, the room filled with the earliest spring flowers and the faint honeyed scent of beeswax candles and rosewater. No Rose abbot or abbess would ever tolerate tallow candles.

Margaret looks not unlike the plaster statue of the Queen of Heaven that stands over the altar, with Her soft face and gentle smile. He wonders if Margaret notes the resemblance. He notes the tension in her shoulders while she prays.

Apparently finished with her prayer Margaret turns and jumps with a small gasp when she sees him. “Oh! Brother Eadwin, I didn’t hear you.”

“I apologize, I didn’t mean to surprise. I didn’t wish to disturb you.” Perhaps he shouldn’t smile at her, but he does.

Margaret smiles back at him. “How long will it take us to reach Eagletop?”

“A little over a fortnight at our most direct route, I would imagine,” Eadwin says. “Barring inclement weather and other unforeseen events.”

Margaret takes his hand and kisses his knuckles as if he’s a bishop. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Every day that I’m away from my lord father’s house is a gift I will never be able to repay.”

There is a knife in Eadwin’s gut, and though Lady Margaret can’t know of it she seems determined to twist it. “My lady, it is I who ought to be thanking you.” And begging your forgiveness, he thinks, pulling his hand away. Lady Cat’s voice in his ear: Queen of Heaven bless the poor girl.

He dreams of her that night, in ways that he will try to forget in the morning. He dreams that her hair is soft as down, as warm as the summer sun. He dreams of her lips, her hands, her smile and her sparkling eyes.

He wakes cold, thinking of how a lack of care can tarnish the brightest silver.

#.

Margaret

She can’t entirely make sense of the way Brother Eadwin behaves around her. Four days into their journey, he seems determined to hardly look at her during the day, but when they chance across each other alone in their lodgings he is always warm with her. The driver Swithin is neither particularly warm nor cold, though Margaret is sure he thinks her silly for always checking over her shoulder for her father’s men.

It isn’t an idle fear. Her father can be fickle in ways that she often suffers for. Her husband might receive no dowry at all for her, if her father decides to revoke his approval for the marriage.

She only prays that Lord Wulfric does not send her back. She couldn’t live, going back to that house.

Margaret has long thought that the habits of the Order of the Moon make the brothers and sisters look like a troop of black mushrooms, but Brother Eadwin is so lean that he reminds her instead of a crow ruffled against the cold. He moves somewhat like a bird as well, with a quick and keen gaze that would unsettle if her weren’t so gentle with her.

On an evening when they are stopped in a village and Brother Eadwin escorts her to evening mass, Margaret is dimly aware that he spends most of the mass looking at her from the corner of his eye. It makes her feel shy, but she can’t quite wish for it to stop. There is some small prideful streak in her that will never let go of the notion that she is, at this moment, when she is twenty-five and Theadora has made every implication about her fading youth, still lovely enough that even a monk can’t seem to take his eyes off her when he thinks no one is looking.

They sit a while as the church begins to empty, watching the candles burn on the altar.

“What is Lord Wulfric like?” she asks. She has been afraid to ask about him. Better to let him exist in her mind as a possibility, as her chance at freedom. Here, in the church and not quite a week free of her father, she feels safe enough to risk disappointment.

Brother Eadwin lets out a low breath. “I must confess, my lady, I do not think his current enthusiasm for religion will last.”

Margaret laughs softly. “Does he properly have it now? I thought that was a tale you were spinning for my father.”

“He believes he does,” Eadwin replies. “His late wife was lost with their newborn son, some four months ago.” He gazes at the statue of the Mother, her palms spread wide with a cloak and a bounty falling from it. Then Eadwin sighs, and turns on the bench to look at Margaret. “I do not wish to speak ill of my lord, but I feel I must prepare you.”

Margaret looks at him, silent.

“My lord Wulfric—” Eadwin searches for the politic words. “He has a moon’s eye.” A roaming one, he means, trained upon other women, and his affections are fickle and transient.

Margaret nods. “Many men do.” She can accept that, if it is the price of her freedom. Her husband does not need to love her.

“He is also a man of temper,” Brother Eadwin says, “though I would say it shows less in his words than your lord father’s does.”

Margaret gazes at him for a moment that feels like an age. “Do you mean that he is loud but unrefined in his cruelty,” she says, “or do you mean that his temper comes through his fists?”

“The first, for the most part,” Eadwin says, “but the second is not unknown to him. I rarely saw that turned on his lady wife, but—”

“Rarely is not the same as never,” Margaret says flatly. And herself a second wife, who will always be measured against the first.

Brother Eadwin looks away a moment, and then he meets her gaze again. “I know, and I am sorry, my lady.”

Margaret looks back to the altar, her vision clouding a moment. She closes her eyes, draws in a slow breath. “I cannot go back to my father’s house,” she says. “I would rather take a fist than another moment of him chipping away at my soul.”

Brother Eadwin is silent.

“Thank you,” she says, “for warning me.” She watches as the Sisters of the Fields that keep this church pass by, and waits for them to fall out of earshot. “I suppose this is improper to ask in a church,” she murmurs, “but I must know. How do you expect him to treat me in the bedchamber?”

Eadwin does not answer her at first. “I do not believe Lord Wulfric goes out of his way to be cruel in that regard,” he says eventually, “but many men are selfish, and I suspect it has not occurred to him to pay better heed.” Whatever he may have seen or heard in the past to lead him to this conclusion, he does not share with Margaret.

Margaret takes in another steadying breath and nods. “Such will be my lot, then. Our Mother will watch over me.” She makes a sign of prayer, and stands. “I think we should be getting some rest, Brother.”

They do not speak to each other as they make their way back to the house where they are staying. Margaret thinks of her brother Harry telling Felix how much Theadora cried on their wedding night.

She looks at Brother Eadwin, and thinks of her father saying she might not reach her husband a maiden. She thinks, even after this conversation, that he would treat her well. She just has to make her next move with care.

#.

When she asks, while they are on the road and the sun is shining, Brother Eadwin tells her about Lord Wulfric’s children. He tells her first about the legitimate daughters, Wulfwyn and Mildred, who are twelve and five. Wulfwyn is a headstrong girl, and her father often laments that she was not born a son. Mildred is shyer, fond of dolls and pretty things.

Their brother Everard is nine, and shy like his younger sister. He keeps a small dog named Blossom, and is frightened of most everything but especially his father. There has been no one to defend him but the nursemaid since the death of his mother.

Eadwin then tells her of the others, the three natural daughters of varying ages. Two are the daughters of maidservants, the third is rumored to have been born to a lady of another house, but Eadwin can neither credit nor discredit it. They are put to work by the stewardess who oversees the keeping of the house, taught only as much as they need to keep finances.

The other son, he says, was born to the wife of Wulfric’s cousin. This he knows for certain, because he was with Wulfric at the time, and was asked to perform the blessing.

“You didn’t tell me he came with scandal,” Margaret says.

“It’s scandal fourteen years past,” Eadwin says, as if the gentry ever forgets.

“Does he like the older boy better?” Margaret asks. “Is Everard in danger of being displaced as firstborn son?”

“I couldn’t say, my lady.”

In the quiet, when they don’t talk, Margaret thinks of men who shout and raise their fists. She thinks of men who tell the stories they need to tell, and women who ask too few questions. She can’t even really be angry with Brother Eadwin—she was drowning in her father’s house. She would have climbed into any boat, no matter how many leaks it had.

She believes him, that he is sorry for this. It’s in his eyes when he lets himself look at her. If she asked to go back to her father’s house, she thinks he would take her. He would invent a reason for her to change her mind. He has told her he lied about her age—she thinks he would probably lie about her health, if she asked him to.

She does not ask.

Swithin remains her biggest obstacle to getting a hook in Brother Eadwin. The man hardly speaks to her, but he always seems to be watching one or the other of them, and doesn’t seem to have any interest in finding his own entertainments when they stop for the night. Margaret counts the days until they’re due to arrive at Eagletop, and makes a point of insisting that Brother Eadwin take her to every church or chapel or shrine they find themselves near. It is the only time she can see him alone—either Swithin’s suspicion of her does not extend as far as the church doors, or he’s something of a heathen.

She brushes her hand against Eadwin’s when she reaches for her prayer beads, she leans close to whisper in his ear. He’s more permissive than he ought to be. He looks at her in ways he shouldn’t.

#.

Eadwin

They are taking an early dinner in a tavern when Margaret looks out the window and the blood pours away from her face. “No.”

“My lady?” Eadwin shifts to look, and sees a man in Grenacre livery dismounting his horse.

“He’s sent for me,” Margaret whispers. She leaps up from the table, knocking her cup of wine to the floor in a bloody pool. “I’ll not go back,” she says, frantic now. “I’ll die before I go back.”

Eadwin catches her arm before she can flee. “My lady,” he says, “go up to your room and shut yourself in. I will handle this.”

Margaret looks at him like a hare in a trap, and nods. She hurries across the floor and bolts up the stairs, stumbling over the hem of her skirts. Eadwin looks at Swithin. “Go up and keep an eye on her door.”

“What are you about, Brother?”

“What I’m always about,” Eadwin says, standing adjusting the moonstone amulet on his chest. “Talking my way around someone.”

He is fifteen and, for the first time, when his father raises a fist to him Eadwin hits him first.

He goes out to meet the man before he can come into the tavern. The further he can keep this man and his words away from Lady Margaret, the better. He knows too well how resolutions to stay away can be corroded by guilt, by empty promises.

The man is young, well built. Probably favored in a brawl. Eadwin is no longer as young as he once was and he was never broad, he hopes it won’t come to a match between them. If he still has one thing on his side, it is that he is decently tall and long limbed, and that often counts for more than it should.

He is seventeen, and the Knight of the Sun who pulled him out of a fight on the riverbank is trying very hard to get him to pledge his fists—and the sword he would be given—to the service of the church. Eadwin can hardly see out of his left eye, and he thinks he would not like to fight someone else’s fight.

“Brother,” the man says with a nod, his voice more detached than deferential.

“Have you come bearing some news for Lady Margaret?” It is possible, Eadwin thinks, that her father did not send this man at all, but one of her brothers. Perhaps they only want to ensure that she is well.

The man does not want to be doing this, it is clear in his face he thinks this is ugly work. “His lordship has changed his mind about allowing Lady Margaret to marry. He says she is unfit to represent the family and will be a disgrace, particularly traveling without a chaperone.”

“His lordship sent her without a chaperone by his own order,” Eadwin says. “As it is, I am afraid it is too late. We are nearly to Eagletop and my lord is expecting her.” They are over a week away from Eagletop and it is not too late until they are wed, as they both know, but Wulfric could make it the talk of the realm if Henry Beckett reneges now.

“Lord Henry is still her father.”

“He is welcome to come to my lord’s house and discuss it with him.” It will take weeks for this man to return to Grenacre and then for Lord Henry to put together an appropriate entourage and arrive at Eagletop, by which point it would be very easy to have already performed and consummated the wedding. “Do you propose to arrest the lady like some common thief? For that you would have to consult Lady Edith, whose lands we are on.”

He is twenty and Father Eberhard says he does not seem the usual sort of novice, but if he commits himself to his work and his devotions then he will surely find his place in the order. He attends his first moon mass a month later, and he swears the Queen of Heaven speaks to him, and for days he weeps whenever he thinks of it.

The man is growing angry with him now. “You have no right to detain my lord’s daughter.”

“I am not detaining her,” Eadwin replies mildly. “Lady Margaret has expressed quite clearly her desire to marry Lord Wulfric, and that she will not think of returning to her father’s house. As I said, my lord is expecting her. He will be greatly displeased if she is recalled home now by her father’s fickleness. In a month my lord Wulfric will likely be joining Prince George for summer hunting. What stories, I wonder, could he tell about the man who promised his daughter only to whisk her away again for no reason but his change of temper? You know, that is the sort of thing that makes people talk. Talk is a vicious thing.”

He is thirty-six, and the new abbot Father Algar has grown tired of being summoned into counsel with a young lord who does not want to be told what he does not want to hear. He says to Eadwin, if anyone can talk to him without being driven to madness, it’s you.

The man’s eyes narrow at Eadwin. “What shall my lord say of the man who married his only daughter against his wish?”

“He can say what he likes,” Eadwin says, “the question is, who does your lord have to say it to?” The Becketts are not a well-connected family, or Eadwin would have known of them before Lady Catherine told him to go to Grenacre. He may be overselling Wulfric’s closeness with the prince, but this man does not know that, and neither does Henry Beckett. “It would be wise, I think, to remind your lord that he promised Lord Wulfric a dowry. Our Heavenly Mother does not look kindly on men of no integrity.”

The man’s face turns red and he tries to shoulder past Eadwin. “I will speak to the lady myself.”

Eadwin grasps the man’s arm and shoves him firmly back. “The lady does not wish to see you or any other man from her father’s house.”

The man reaches for his sword, and Eadwin raises his brows. “How do you think it will play out for you in Lady Edith’s courts that you drew your sword on an unarmed monk in her estate?” Lady Edith, her father’s only living child, is well known for her piety and commitment to the church. They say that no convent in the kingdom receives quite as much support as the sisters of the Sun that dwell closest to her seat.

There are people watching them now, in the street and in the tavern. The man slowly releases his grip on the hilt, nostrils flaring. “You can hide behind that black robe all you like, Brother. I know a snake when I see one.”

Eadwin gives him a cool smile. “As I said, Lord Henry is welcome to come to Eagletop to discuss the matter with Lord Wulfric himself. You had best hurry back, so that His Lordship can decide what to do. You may tell him also that Lady Margaret is safe and well, and we have done our best to keep her comfortable, since he sent her with so little support.”

He is thirty-eight, and he is blessing Wulfric’s bastard son. The child won’t stop screaming, and it is the last time the boy’s mother will ever lay eyes on him. She’ll be sent to a convent a week after Wulfric takes his son back to Eagletop.

Eadwin stands in front of the tavern door until the man’s horse is out of sight, and he turns inside to go up to Lady Margaret’s room, at once to reassure her and to tell Swithin that they must find another place to stay, lest that man did not come alone.

Swithin is waiting in the hallway and agrees that they must go. He leaves to ready the horses and carriage.

Eadwin knocks on Margaret’s door and receives no answer. When he opens it, the first thing he sees is the pool of blood on the floor, and Margaret’s pale arm thrown out where she collapsed.

Eadwin moves faster than he has in years. He thinks he shouts for help. Where in the name of Heaven did she get the dagger?

He is fifty-two, and Wulfric has asked him to find a pious wife.

#original fiction #prose #brother of the moon #botm

[greyskywrites]

The Resurrectionist

Note: this story contains descriptions of injuries and body horror, as well as references to abuse, sexual violence and implied coercion.

6k | ko-fi

Any hack necromancer can raise a body and make it dance like a puppet on strings. My father was a true resurrectionist, a man who could compel the spirit back into the flesh it had parted from and make them whole once more. He never told anyone how he learned the secret, not even me.

My father was educated, for all the good it did him. It didn’t give him the sort of money to make people overlook his personality. If he got by, it was for one reason only: there wasn’t anyone on God’s green earth who could do what my father could do. What he taught me to do from the moment I was old enough to say the words correctly. I learned out of his black book, which I would later take off his body after I killed him and before I committed what remained of that son of a bitch to the fiery pit from whence nobody will ever be able to pull him except the Almighty himself.

I was twelve when the war started. My father was never a man to miss an opportunity, and he set himself up as a doctor right quick, made a reputation for himself as a miracle worker, putting dead men back in their bodies so they could go and fight another day. Who really minded if prisoners of war kept dropping dead of a mysterious wasting sickness at the same time?

It wasn’t that there was any money in it, God knew the pay was shit, but it had other things my father wanted, among them plenty of opportunities for him to teach me the family trade.

I never knew my mother. Wouldn’t even be sure that I had a mother, that I weren’t another of my father’s monsters, except that he did tell me how he got me. I was a price paid, in exchange for her husband’s resurrection. My father claimed he didn’t even remember her name.

What the war gave my father that he most wanted, was a place close to power. The war was two years gone, half over though we didn’t know it then, when my father finally revealed to the general what we did. I remember my father waking me in the middle of the night to do a demonstration.

It was my task to find a man in the hospital tent who had breathed his last, but not yet been discovered. I found a boy of only about seventeen, one who I had met while he lived, and liked more than I should. He was a joker, the kind it was easy to make friends with. He had been teaching me how to play cards and, more importantly, how to cheat. His name was Jonah, and I wanted to see him smile again.

I helped my father to prepare while the general held the lantern, not understanding at the time the reservation and fear on the man’s face. What my father and I did was to me as natural as any other occupation. I knew we had to be secretive, because our work was illegal my father said, but I did not realize then how our trade made others recoil in revulsion.

I was the one who drew the dead boy’s chin up, cradling his head so my father could draw a line of the necessary oil down the outline of his windpipe and say the necessary words. I was still holding that boy’s head when his body gave a great convulsion and he cried out in terrible pain, as they always did. I was numb to it then. I saw the boy’s eyes go wide with terror, but he was alive, color rushing back into his cheeks, feverish warmth in his previously cold skin.

The general cursed and nearly dropped the lantern. My father turned all his attention to the general and it was left to me to soothe the fear of the newly resurrected, to give him water and wipe the sweat from his brow.

The look he gave me then, I still see it sometimes when I close my eyes at night. “You should have left me there.”

I didn’t know what to say. Father made him sleep, and by morning Jonah had forgotten whatever he had seen in the hours he was dead, but there was something yet changed about him.

I never did see him smile after that.

My father got what he wanted, though. He had total control over the dead soldiers, making them get up again so they could go on fighting again and again and again. He was petty king of the camp, the doctor everyone hated and no one could deny seemed to be able to do the impossible. He gloated in it, and I don’t know what he meant to do with it all once the war ended.

Half of me believes that if I hadn’t killed him, the war would have gone on forever.

The only kind of love my father could give was the love of the branding iron. He didn’t care one whit about anything he couldn’t claim as his own. It was why he named me after himself and it was a name I was glad to bury with him.

I killed him six months before the end of the war, just shy of my sixteenth birthday. I killed him because I couldn’t stop thinking about Jonah telling me I should have left him to the grave, or how he never smiled or joked anymore and wouldn’t even take out his cards to play. I took my father’s black book, all the money we had left, and I left long before dawn. Had to go on foot, because horses had never liked me or my father, but I knew how to be a shadow under the moonlight.

I needed time before I would be ready to face anyone again. I let my hair grow, my tangled curls going wild, and I thought about what I was going to call myself, how I would remake myself in a world without my father in it.

Last names didn’t matter to me, I could pick them up and shed them as I needed. It was the given name that troubled me, I tried on a dozen more in those months I was by myself in the forests, muttering them to the stars and the eyes I felt watching me in the dark.

I settled on Hesper. Evening. That space in-between, when the light slipped away and the only things that could see me were the moon and the stars and the creatures that didn’t see me for the unfinished thing I was.

#

It was over a year before I let myself be seen again. I had come to a cabin belonging to a grey-haired old man, who I found splitting firewood. I asked him if he could spare a place by the fire for me, in exchange for the two rabbits I’d shot that morning.

Even in spite of the changes I had made to myself, he took me for a man, and seemed happy enough to have a visitor. He invited me in, said his wife would cook for us.

His “wife,” if she could be called that, weren’t a day over thirteen. She had the scared and mean look of a dog that had been kicked too many times, and I was nice and courteous to her and the old fuck both, which pleased him more than I liked. He said not many people knew their proper manners these days, in a way I knew that remark was meant more for the girl than me.

We sat down at the table while that poor girl skinned the rabbits, and the man asked me what I did. I told him I was a healer looking for a new place to set down roots. Asked him if he had any ailments that needed looking after.

Any excuse to get my hands on the bastard.

He told me had an old injury in his shoulder that troubled him. I asked the girl to go and get me some fresh water, so she wouldn’t have to see what I was about to do. The old man shouted at her to hurry up as I rolled up my sleeve, and once that door closed behind her I plunged my hand into his chest.

If you know what you’re doing, human flesh parts like warm butter under your hands. I wrapped my fingers around his heart while he was choking and closed my fist tight, his blood running hot down my arm and dripping from my elbow. He dropped like a stone, thudding against the floor.

I bent, taking what I needed from his body. I covered the hole in his chest and closed his eyes before the girl came back, and she found me putting the things I took from him into jars. The pail of water slipped from her hands, a puddle splashing across half the room, mixing with the blood on the floor.

I wiped the blood from my hands and started cutting apart the rabbits, putting them in the soup pot the girl had prepared. I asked her where she was from.

The girl stood in the door, and told me she’d grown up not far away, that her pa had sold her to her husband for the price of a pig. Weren’t any better living with her pa, and if she went back he’d probably turn around and find someone else for her to marry.

I told her I was going west, asked her if she wanted to come along with me for a while, until she was able to look after herself or found some place she wanted to stay.

She said she’d like that.

I told her to mind the pot, I’d take care of her late husband. I left her standing by the stove while I dragged the bastard out by his boots.

They were good boots, so I took them. Fit me decent. I took his knife and the buttons from his shirt.

I didn’t have a mind to take the effort to bury him, so I made sure his ghost wouldn’t come back and I called up the mushrooms over his body to take care of him. He blossomed all over with pretty white caps and by the time anyone came looking for him there wouldn’t be anything to find.

When I got back to the cabin the girl had mopped up the blood and water on the floor and brought down everything valuable the old man had owned. I took his rifle, because it was better than the one I had, and I took his bullets and let her pick through the other things she might want to keep or sell.

I asked her what her name was. She introduced herself as Peggy Duncan.

“You can keep Peggy,” I said, “but your last name ain’t Duncan anymore.”

We ate rabbit soup and decided we would be Hesper and Peggy Cochran, sisters. We slept that night in the cabin and left early the next morning after breakfast.

The old man had a horse but Peggy couldn’t ride, so we turned it loose. We walked all day and well into the night, which was hard on Peggy.

We walked until we found a westbound train to hop, tucking ourselves in among the freight and being sparing with our food and mostly going hungry. While that black iron horse thundered westward, Peggy taught me how to carry myself like a woman, how to comb out my hair so I didn’t look quite so wild. I repaid her in card games and filthy jokes I had learned from the soldiers, and she would laugh even as her face flushed red to the tips of her ears.

It was nice. I hadn’t ever really had a friend before.

We got off the train when it was nothing but prairie for miles, in a little town that called itself Grand River. It wasn’t grand, and the river wasn’t much more than a lazy muddy creek.

It was exciting to spin myself a new story: the daughter of a doctor, one who trained me up out of paternal indulgence. Grand River didn’t have a doctor, so they were a little more willing to make do with a young woman who ought to have been thinking about marriage instead. The good people of Grand River let us take a little cabin not far from the church to call our own. It had used to belong to a couple that had gone back east when farming turned out to be more than they had bargained for.

Didn’t take me long to figure out how to twist my father’s magic to be something a little more useful to the living. I couldn’t use it to heal anybody else, but if I took on their wound, swapped out their illness for my health I could draw upon his black book to heal it in myself. And if coyotes had a way of dropping dead when they drew too near to my cabin, well that was one fewer to eat the neighbor’s chickens.

The folks of Grand River weren’t stupid, they knew I wasn’t any real doctor, but it only took saving a few people for them to decide to look the other way. I might’ve been some kind of witch, but their babies were born safe and a boy who was mauled by a dog walked out of my cabin without so much as a scratch on him. A woman’s abortion went bad, and I took her fever. All I ever asked of them was enough food and firewood for me and Peggy, and for their discretion. They gave both in ample supply.

Neither Peggy or me had much use for church, which was a thorn in the side of Pastor Matthews, who counted every other resident of Grand River in his flock. Every Sunday after church he would come to our cabin, to the faint disgruntlement of both the residents who were accustomed to hosting him for supper, and to me and Peggy who had to cook for him.

We decided to make a game of it, finding a way to drive the pastor off. The jokes didn’t do it, as a newly-ordained Matthews had ministered to soldiers during the war. For a time Peggy committed to acting like a wild animal or a heathen witch, but Matthews only reacted with mild irritation at the antics of a girl “old enough to know better.”

So I set about to try and seduce the good pastor, to test his commitment to his principles. I worked on him for months, suggestion and implication, a careless touch that might’ve been nothing. Peggy sewed me a dress to wear when he came round, and I made sure my lips were pink and shiny. I wound him tight and let him spin.

He came up to our cabin when the moon was full and bright and you could see for miles across the prairie. I was sitting out on the porch, idle as only a witch can be, listening to the coyotes yipping out in the dark. Matthews was as hot as the summer wind, scorching when he kissed me. Told him I couldn’t take him inside with Peggy there, so he took me back to the church, and there before the altar I gave that man something to believe in.

#

Maybe I was never meant to have peace for more than a few years.

Peggy grew tall with nobody to beat her down, and pretty enough that there were always boys and men too old for her snooping around our cabin. I chased off the men, and I let the boys stay because even if Peggy had lost her taste for husbands, she hadn’t lost her taste for fun. The mothers in town disapproved of her, but it wasn’t enough to keep their sons away from our cabin. Only thing I cared about was making sure Peggy knew how to take care of herself, both with the boys and any trouble they put her in.

Pastor Matthews was still chasing after me like a hound on the scent every time the moon was full, and it was entertaining for a while, but eventually became a tedious annoyance. The man didn’t have enough pride to keep his guilt to himself, and I didn’t care to soothe his troubled mind. Even taking up with a few other men in town wasn’t enough to dissuade the pastor. I think the only things that kept him from asking me to marry him was that I wouldn’t reassure him my healing was a gift from God, and the fact that my church attendance was limited to the hours after sunset.

I could smell it in the air, when trouble started coming for me out of the east. I didn’t know what kind of trouble, but it came with a thunderhead wind on the same black iron horse that had brought me and Peggy. All my hair stood on end the day that train rolled in to town, a feeling I couldn’t name and couldn’t shake. It was a stiflingly humid day, not fit for the kind of restlessness that had overtaken me. Peggy thought I was having fits. We were laid out on the shade of our porch, trying to catch the breeze when the man who had gotten off the train came walking up the path to our cabin.

He didn’t recognize me then, but I would have known him in the dark, the shape of that mouth that had never once smiled after my father had forced his soul back into his body. He wasn’t a boy anymore, he’d grown into his arms and legs and he wore a thick black beard. Jonah Blake stood with the sun beating down on him, looking up at me from under his broad-brimmed hat. “Folks here tell me you know things,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, my sweat turned icy cold on my skin. “What are you looking to know?”

His voice never wavered while he told me the story, how he’d struggled after the war, and by the time he found his way home the house he’d been born in had been burned to the ground and nobody could tell him what had happened to his mother or his sister. “I want to know if they’re still alive,” he said, “and where I can find them.”

He paused, squinting at my face. “Have we met before?”

“I’m no medium,” I said, “I’m not in the business of talking to spirits.” Corpses didn’t bother me, but ghosts were a nasty business, all pain and things that refused to stay buried.

“Well the spiritualists can’t seem to give me nothing but tricks, anyway,” Jonah said, “so what can you do, that the folks here think you can help me?”

“I treat wounds, that’s all.”

“I had a woman tell me you as good as raised her boy out of the grave when he was sick with yellow fever,” Jonah said. “Said you spoke to the dead to do it.”

“People will tell themselves whatever they need to make sense of what they don’t understand,” I said. I wanted Jonah Blake to give up on me before he figured out where he knew my face from. “I can’t help you.”

I put him off day after day when he came to my door to plead and to argue, having apparently some conviction that I could help where the mediums and Mesmerists could not. I even asked Pastor Matthews to warn him away from me, but it only seemed to increase Blake’s stubborn bull-headed commitment.

“Why not try to help him?” Peggy asked. “You could probably figure something out.”

“Because this isn’t the first time he’s met me,” I said, “and I don’t want him to remember the first time.”

Blake took to following me, even when I went out to work. I was called out because Mrs. Loman had cut her hand badly, and needed looking after. Blake followed me all the way to her house, and stood outside while I took Mrs. Loman’s cut. I came out with my hand bandaged, aching something terrible, and had the misfortune of crossing paths with Mr. Loman’s horse, a gelded mustang who jerked away from me and panicked at the end of his tie. I hurried off down the street, but Blake had already seen it and I could almost feel it as he put the pieces together.

I got to my cabin before he did but he came banging on the door, shouting and demanding for me to come out. Peggy didn’t know what was going on and cried out when I took the rifle from over the door to greet Blake, determined that if he wouldn’t leave on his own I’d shoot him and be done with it.

Jonah scowled at me with such an ugly look. “You bitch, you’re the necromancer’s boy.”

I stood in the door, halfway between the place I’d come to call home and the world that had never wanted me in it. “I ain’t no boy,” I hissed.

“I thanked God every day I didn’t see you or your witch father,” he spat. “Hoped you’d both been hanged, but now I find you here playing doctor. Those folks out there know what you used to do? Do you still do it?”

“What those folks out there know is that they haven’t lost a baby or its mother since I got off the damn train,” I said. “Now that you know who I am, why don’t you get the hell out of here and find someone else to go chasing ghosts for you?”

Jonah laughed a cold laugh, and looked like he might weep. “Why didn’t you leave me dead?” He sounded like that question had haunted him for a long time. There had been those that we did leave dead, because it would have drawn too much attention if no one under my father’s “care” ever died.

I stared down the barrel of my rifle at that face I had thought about so often in the dark of night. The face I had cradled in my hands when he came back to life, full of fear and pain. “You won’t think the answer is good enough.”

Jonah let out a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob. He half-turned and sank down on the step, draping his arms over his knees, slump-shouldered. I’d seen men broken because of the war, but it wasn’t the war that broke Jonah Blake.

I had laid my hands on him and snapped him in two.

I lowered my rifle, and stepped out on the porch. “What do you remember?” I asked, quiet.

“Nothing,” Jonah said. “Just the waking up. The terror. Worse than being on the battlefield.” He looked at me. “Your face.”

I let out a breath, and let the stock of the rifle come to rest on the porch. Grand River was too quiet a town for this. For me.

“Didn’t think your old man would ever let you off his rope,” Jonah said.

“I killed him.”

“First smart thing you ever did,” Jonah muttered, turning his gaze out to the street.

I was conscious of the pain in my hand, of the blood beginning to leak through the bandage. “Come inside,” I said, “I have to clean myself up.”

Peggy watched Jonah like I’d invited a wolf into the house. Peggy usually spent her days lazing about letting our cabin fall into a terrible state, but the presence of Jonah Blake had inspired her to wash dishes as if she was going to break each and every one of them over his head. Or maybe mine.

I sat down at one end of the table, Jonah at the other. I unwrapped my hand, blood beginning to flow from the cut again, dark droplets falling on our table. Peggy brought me the black book and the jar that still held her husband’s heart. It was beginning to wither and crumble, but I reckoned it was good for a few more uses.

“Where’d you get that from?” Jonah asked gruffly.

“The old man who used to call himself her husband,” I said. I opened the book, though I knew the words by heart. I muttered the words and my flesh began to knit itself back together, a few sluggish drops of blood leaking from the heart in the jar. Peggy stood behind me with her arms crossed, watching us.

I got the wound down to a slight scar that would fade in time, and Peggy picked up the bandages, throwing them into the stove to burn. I let out a breath, and looked at Jonah. “What are their names?”

“Naomi and Sarah.”

“I don’t know if I can find them,” I said, “but I’ll try.”

Jonah nodded and didn’t thank me.

I stood and went to the cupboard to get a drink. I inclined my head to Peggy. “I think you should go out with one of your gentleman friends tonight.”

“I’m not leaving you alone here,” Peggy whispered back.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Suit yourself.” This was going to be an ugly night for all of us, that was the only thing I was sure of.

Peggy made dinner and I read through the black book, trying to parse something useful from my father’s encoded writing. Jonah didn’t say much, just drank the coffee Peggy gave him and watched me. I felt like I was fourteen again, too small and skinny for my age, clinging to my father’s shadow.

We ate in silence while the clock tolled nine. “Peggy,” I said as she cleared the dishes, “We’re gonna need the hellwater.”

“What’s that?” Jonah asked.

“Worse than the worst liquor you’ve ever had,” I said, “and the only damn way I can figure to go chasing after ghosts. Do you have anything from your kin?”

He gave me letters they had written. I would’ve preferred something they owned, but circumstances being what they were, this would have to do. I would start with the mother.

Peggy got the hellwater out of the chest that we kept locked under my bed. It was stored in an old wine bottle, wrapped in silver wire. My father had always kept a bottle, but this one was my own making, put together on a night when the moon turned bloody. I didn’t ever use it except for the most dire cases.

We cleared everything off the table, and put out all the lights except one. Jonah sat across from me, the light flickering over our faces as I drank my shot of hellwater, the bitter taste coating my tongue and the back of my throat. I shook my head and let out a breath, reaching out my hands to Jonah.

He just looked at me.

“You’re gonna have to help me,” I said, already starting to feel like my skin was too loose, “I won’t know I got the right person, otherwise.” Jonah let out a slow breath, and put his hands in mine. I felt myself growing smudged at the edges, the boundary between me and everything else growing less distinct. I closed my eyes and slipped away into the dark.

Hellwater gets you the closest to death you can be while still expecting to be alive afterward. It’s been different every time I’ve felt it, cold and hot and as gentle as a warm breeze or as unyielding as stone.

With my eyes closed, I could see differently. I could see the flame, but not the candle. I could see Peggy like a silvery white glow, pulsing faintly with her heartbeat. And I could see Jonah, the same green color of the sky before a tornado, expanding and contracting with his breath.

I reached out into the space between the air, the way I went hunting for souls recently departed, and called out for Sarah Blake.

A thin golden thread ran from the back of Jonah’s hand, and out in the night. It began to coil around his arm, though Jonah didn’t notice what he couldn’t see. Ghosts cling to the living, tied by a thousand threads of kinship. Family, friends, lovers. Even someone who was only a neighbor for a very long time.

She came with a howling and an ache, and I flinched, my hands tightening in Jonah’s.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice sounding as if it were coming to me underwater, or through a heavy door.

I couldn’t look her in the face, I could never look the dead in the face. Their forms were inconstant, shifting and warping. “Sarah Blake is dead,” I whispered.

A great well of despair opened up in Jonah and I couldn’t look at that, either. “How did she die?”

“I told you I’m not a medium.” I wasn’t going to ask her any damn questions, wasn’t going to give her a chance to get in my head. “What about my sister?”

I had to work to thrust the ghost of his mother back into the night. She wanted to stay, to sink her hooks into her son. I could feel a heavy cold on my back, and called out for Naomi.

This thread flowed out and went taut. I let out a breath, carefully let my mind trace out along its length, trying to get a sense for where it ended. “Alive,” I said, my mouth sour and dry. “South of here.”

Another person’s hope is a painful thing to feel when you’re straddling the worlds of the living and the dead. I released Jonah’s hands and slammed mine down on the table, wishing I could squeeze back into my body, wishing this would all be over.

You might laugh, to think of a necromancer being afraid of ghosts. I’d tell you I have the damn right to be. The dead can smell it when the living start mucking about where they don’t belong, and they come howling to you like moths to a flame. Only thing is nothing hurts them anymore, and it’s the living who stand to get burned.

I felt Peggy’s hands on me and I wanted to tell her to stop, that she shouldn’t touch me when I was like this. I heard her shouting my name. “Hesper! Tell me what to do!”

I batted her away and bent with my head on the table, the table the only real thing before me, and I breathed. It was so heavy, so cold. I could feel my head against the table but I couldn’t feel anything else.

I only felt my hands when Jonah took them again. “Come back, Witch,” he said, and I didn’t hear any bite in it. “You’re no good to anybody dead.”

“Water,” I croaked, my throat becoming real and as dry as sand. “I need water.”

Someone pressed a glass in my hand, and when I couldn’t they brought it to my face. I must have spilled half the damn thing down my front, but the water was cold and clear and I could feel myself shrinking back into the seams of my skin. My edges were starting to become firmer. The ghosts were quieter.

I pressed the glass to my forehead, and opened my eyes. Peggy was fretting. Jonah was just watching me.

“I’m fine, Peggy,” I sighed.

Peggy lifted her hand and struck Jonah hard across the back of the head. “Don’t you ever ask her to do that again and don’t you tell anybody she can!”

Jonah cursed and rubbed the back of his head.

“Leave him alone,” I groaned, rubbing my temple. I dragged my hand down my face, and realized Jonah was still holding the other. He gazed at me, mixed pain and relief in his eyes. “Thank you.”

I stared at his face, and told Peggy to go outside for a minute. She looked at me reluctantly, but stepped out. I could feel the sweat on my back turning cold, my shirt sticking to my skin.

“I wanted to see you smile again,” I whispered.

Jonah just stared at me.

“I told you you wouldn’t think the answer was good enough,” I said. “But that’s it. There hasn’t been a day since I haven’t missed your smile.” I let go of his hand and stood, though my legs were shaky and I had to catch myself on the table. The hellwater had made a miserable wreck of me. I dragged myself over to the wash basin, setting the glass inside as I leaned against the wall.

“Do you have any idea how far my sister is?” Jonah asked.

“No,” I said. “She could be in the town just south of here, she could be in Argentina, for all I know.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to start looking,” Jonah said, getting up from the table.

I laid my forehead against the wall. If Jonah Blake knew who and what I was, then I couldn’t let him know where I was. My time in Grand River had come to an end. I didn’t feel anything about it then, I was too tired. “I hope you find her.”

He was quiet a moment, like he was thinking about saying something else. I heard him put something on the table. “Keep out of trouble, Cochran,” he said. After a moment, “Keep saving babies.”

I heard him go out the front door, and heard Peggy come back in. “Hesper? Are you alright?”

I pushed myself away from the wall and turned to look at the table. Jonah had left me a battered, worn, and bloodstained pack of cards. I picked them up, weighing them in my hand like they were made of gold. Before he died the first time, Jonah had told me I was a natural-born cheat. Made sense, I suppose, for the only child of a man who made a business of cheating death.

“I’m fine,” I murmured. “I’m gonna lay down a bit.”

I slept with those cards tucked into my shirt, close to my heart.

#

If Peggy were a smart girl she’d have stayed in Grand River. I told her she ought to, she had a home there and even if she never married she’d always have enough men chasing after her she wouldn’t have to worry about much.

What Peggy was, though, was god-damned stubborn bull-headed young woman. “If you’re leaving, then I’m leaving too.”

We packed up what was valuable to us, like we had in her husband’s house, and in the middle of the night we stowed ourselves away in a train car, headed somewhere further west. Didn’t think we’d go as far as California, not just then, but I thought Colorado territory might be a place wild enough for us. There was lots of world left for us yet, I didn’t want to run through it too fast.

“I want to learn the work,” she said, as the train went over a bridge, giving us a hell of a view of the canyon below.

“Fuck no,” I said. “Why’d you want to learn that mess?”

“Because it shouldn’t just be you,” Peggy said. “You’re just taking care of me, otherwise.”

“It’s damned dirty work,” I said. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

“There ain’t never gonna be honest work for girls like us,” Peggy said. “I’d rather have the boys for fun.” She light a cigarette and watched me shuffling cards. “You’re gonna have to tell me about Blake, sometime.”

“I’ll teach you everything I know before I tell you a damn thing about Blake,” I said.

“Oh, I knew he’d got his hooks into you bad,” Peggy said. “Didn’t realize how bad. Must have been a real looker when you met him.”

He hadn’t, really. He’d still been too soft around the edges, baby-faced with crooked teeth, and God I had dreamed about kissing him a thousand times. “First thing you need to know,” I said, showing her the King of Spades and his blood-stained face. “Any hack necromancer can raise a body and make it dance.”

#original fiction #short story #western #weird west #weird western

[greyskywrites]

Wolf’s Price

[First] [Previous] [AO3] [ko-fi]

XXIII. Long Live the Wolves

2.6k

I will tell it to you as it was told to me.

That, on a warm summer evening, Crown Prince Andon of Kressos was host to a feast and a ball in the Grand Palace. It was a magnificent affair, by all accounts. Garlands of summer flowers strung from wall to wall, filling the ballroom with their scent. Wine flowing freely, near everyone who was of any importance in Kressos present and attending. Naturally, no Sarenn lords or ladies had been invited.

In the few months since she had arrived, no one had paid much attention to the quiet cook who had so quickly ingratiated herself with the kitchen staff. If they noticed that she stained her hair a darker hue, that she was always careful to be absent when some attendant close to the prince arrived, no one thought to be suspicious. Many women wish their hair were a different color. Many women are wise enough to avoid powerful men.

It was quite unexpected, when the head cook suddenly took ill before the ball. It might have promised disaster, except for the new cook, who took command of the kitchens with such ease, directing the roasting of many kinds of fowl, of the enormous river fish of which Kressosi are so fond. Of venison and pork and veal. They said to themselves, how lucky we are, to have her here. Perhaps someday she will be head cook, herself.

And always, most importantly, was the wine. Great barrels of it, I was told, big enough to drown a man in. These, the new cook tended to most especially, because by custom the prince would begin the festivities with a toast, and everyone would drink together.

No one thought it strange that this new cook worked late into the night, often by herself. It was an important event they were preparing for, and she was determined it be perfect—but she was kind enough to insist they all be rested, so that nothing go wrong because of their weariness. So no one was awake to think it strange, when the new cook whispered secret words to the herbs she boiled over the fire, or to think it strange how carefully she let the mixture cool before she poured it into the barrels of wine. Perhaps, upon waking, they did not notice the particular green smell that had filled the kitchens, because she had already begun to prepare for the making of breakfast, and melting fat will cover a great deal.

The noble lords and ladies of Kressos all began to arrive early that night, each determined to outdo each other in the show of their clothes, of their carriages and horses. Such noble houses of Kressos, Stefjan and Kellar, Gerr and Hoss, and so on.

Prince Andon and Princess Arabel were most gracious hosts, each finely outfitted in Luon silk and Sarenn fur, the white manes of snow lions, and a comb of Sarenn ivory in Arabel’s dark hair.

Delicate glasses were filled with dark wine, and given among the lords and ladies, who simply held onto them until the prince could give his toast, as was custom. They whispered of rumors of what had occurred in the north, of Commander Emiran’s disappearance, as well as the vanishing of the prince’s personal physician. No one dared speak aloud what they truly thought, that His Highness the Prince must have decided that Emiran’s popularity was too great a threat to his own. There was a great deal of whispering among those who had brothers and sons who were military men, about whether it would be more prudent to call them home.

The prince gave his toast, in which he spoke of Kressos’ success, and, most alarmingly, brought up the missing commander. He promised that Muras Emiran and his companions would be found soon enough, he would make sure of it.

No one in the kitchen had yet noticed that the new cook was missing.

They toasted, and drank, and at first it seemed that all was well. There was a great deal of eating and merriment, trying to put the thought of the missing commander out of their minds. Andon, especially, drank quite heavily.

It was Lord Stefjan, who fell first. So every version of this part of the story tells me, without doubt. Stefjan who keeled back out of his chair, and fell dead to the floor. Then, all at once, it began. One after the other, everyone who had partaken of the wine began to fall, some choking and unable to breathe, some vomiting.

In the most dramatic of the stories, it is Arabel and Andon who fall last, the prince cradling the body of his dying wife, but that all seems quite tawdry to me, and the person I trust most to recount it to me was not there to witness it. A hall full of corpses, and a few in the kitchen, after unwise servants had stolen a swallow of wine. It took some time for the panic to abate, for those people left alive in the palace to think to look at who had been in the kitchens, and discover the new cook missing.

She was searched for, and in the searching, so too was found the body of King Isaec, who had not been poisoned. In his weakness and old age, his throat had been cut. Written on the wall, and this I do know to be true, though I still find it in poor taste, were letters in the dead king’s blood. The same phrases, written twice. Once, in Kressosi, that everyone who saw them might be able to read them. Again, in Sarenn, so that it would be clear.

The king is dead.

Long live the wolves of Saren.

#

Lor had long since fled, when the search for her began. There was a boat waiting for her at the river, a small one, manned only by someone who had long since given up river travel. He did not know exactly what she had been about—stories of the deaths in the Grand Palace would not reach him until days later, after Lor had already left his company. He had agreed to meet her for exactly one reason: because she had promised to bring him news of me.

She told me that Kaspar was in good health, that he was relieved to hear that I was alive and safe, and that he grew quite somber when she told him that it would not be possible for me to return to Kressos. Of Kip, she learned that he was also well, that he was beginning to learn his letters. She said Kaspar was wistful, when he spoke of our son.

He carried her as far as a more distant port, where Lor could safely depart for Saren. She clasped his wrist in her hand before she left him, and met his gaze. “There is more you ought to know,” she said, “about the woman who gave you your son.”

She said he did not believe it, when she told him my name. The name that I was born with, that I had picked up again. He thought it absurd.

“Believe it or not, as you like,” she said, “but it will become known, soon, and you will need to protect your son.” That was how she left him, slipping away into the weak morning light, to secret herself away on a river ship bound for Saren, before it could be known how many had died that night.

#

I met several lords, in the months while I waited for word of Lor. We heard quickly what had happened in Kressos, and even among those lords who had not yet seen me with their own eyes, confirmed for themselves that I was who I said I was, there began to be whisperings. Now, they said, now was our time. While Kressos was in chaos. While Kressos had no king, while Kressos was still trying to reassemble its noble houses.

I heard of riots along the river ports, though none occurred in Arborhall. We simply closed our ports to Kressosi ships, and waited. Those Kressosi that lived in and around Arborhall prudently retreated to their estates, or, if they had none, came to seek refuge from Julas. Julas imposed upon those Kressosi who did have country households to take those that did not, and I waited. I prayed.

The rumors of me spread nearly as quickly as the story of Andon’s death. Liana Anarin still lives. Liana Anarin has come home. The lost princess, the last of Corasin’s wives.

I spent those months sewing a banner. I had sewn them before, when I was yet unmarried. I could have sewn the black hounds of Anar by memory alone. But this banner, as it took shape under my hands, was different. Between the black hounds, I placed a white wolf. The field of red, bloody and bright, brought the wolf into sharp relief.

This was not a banner for my family, not a banner for my brothers and their children. This banner was mine, and for my descendants. We were Anarin, but we were different, too. My children would be Anarin not because of their fathers, but because of their mother.

“I would like you to fly this under the Anarin banner,” I told Julas. “As long as I am here.”

I went to my father’s burial mound many times. The dawnstars grew thickly there, for we had buried many of our ancestors in this place. I talked to him, told him of my doubts and my fears, of my daughter’s growing and Veland’s progress in learning Sarenn and Kressosi. That I hoped, still, that Lor would return to teach him Aziran. That I was sorry I had not gotten to see him before he died. Asking him to keep a place open for me in the halls of the dead, when I joined him to feast with our forebears until the end of humankind.

I heard some tale of the young son of Prince Andon being made king, which might have made me laugh if I had not been so sad at the thought. He was no older than Veland. Some cousin or other relative would manipulate him until he became too troublesome, and then that boy would suddenly take ill. His sisters, I supposed, would be safer, at least for a time. They would be raised until they were old enough to marry whoever was most able to claim the throne of Kressos. Whichever one of them proved a more agreeable option for queen. Whichever one of them was sly enough to survive.

There was never any official declaration of war from Saren. There was no one to give it. There was only a definite turning of the tides, one that must have seemed to come from nowhere to the Kressosi on the far side of the river. The ones on the Sarenn side, I suspected, were less surprised. I thought of the Sarenn women with Kressosi soldiers for husbands, and knew that I was just another in a long line of forces that had harmed them.

I thought particularly of Branhild, the dyer’s niece in Nolsaford. I hoped that she and her child were safe. She had already survived so much upheaval.

And still, I heard no word from Lor.

It would not be until nearly autumn that a woman came to Arborhall on foot, the stain long since washed out of her hair, a basket on one arm. I would have known who she was anywhere. I was, by then, quite well attended by guards, but I ran out reckless to meet her, and threw my arms around her.

Lor wrapped her free arm around me, and let out a great breath, pressing her face into my hair. “Ah,” she whispered, “I missed the sight of your face.” She pulled back, and stroked my hair. “Your daughter,” she said, “what’s her name?”

I had almost forgotten, that was the last thing she said to me. That she would be back to learn my baby’s name. “Roanna,” I said. “Her name is Roanna.” I had named her under the oak trees, and I had managed to do it without weeping.

Lor nodded. “It’s a beautiful name. She’ll do her namesake proud, I’m sure.”

“It took you so long to come back,” I murmured.

“Traveling on the river got quite a bit more difficult, recently,” Lor said. “I had to come all this way on my own two feet, and feed myself along the way. It’s a good thing there’s always a need for a good physician.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Especially in war.” I held her by the arms, gazing up into her face. “You have to tell me everything,” I said.

“I will,” she said, touching her forehead to mine. “But first, I think we should eat. And I have brought you some delicious squash and rabbit.”

“It sounds wonderful,” I said. “Veland will be so excited to see you.” I looped my arm through hers, and we made our way back to the castle.

“The banner,” Lor said, pointing up at my white wolf and black hounds. “Your work?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good. The birth of a new house, I think. I’ve never seen a Tyna banner.  I suspect they were all burned, or any that survived went far away with all the cousins I’ve never met.” Their crest had been a maple tree. “But that one,” she went on, “I would be proud to fly it.”

#

In Saren, there is a saying. As we were made, so we make what comes after. Which is to say, that we are each of us shaped by what has come before us, and so we are making now what will come after us, that which our children will inherit.

I am what I am because I was born in Saren, because when the king decided he wished to have me, my father could not refuse him. I called on the Wolf because I had decided that death was a price worth paying for freedom. Because I had thought a long, long time on Anar’s hounds, who ripped him to shreds for his negligence. I am what I am because when I was given the chance to live, I took it.

When were the threads of my life interwoven with Muras’, with Lor’s? Was it when the war began, or earlier? Perhaps when Corasin decided he wanted another wife. Perhaps when Muras decided he would rather be a soldier than his father’s heir. Perhaps it was long before any of us were born, when the people on each side of the river took the names of Saren and Kressos, and decided that we were enemies.

A thousand threads I cannot see, spun together by Mother Spider who made the world. What tapestry it will make at the end, only she knows. But I have my role to play in it, however reluctantly I have picked it up. I am the woman who should have died a dozen times over, and have not. I am the woman who was chosen by the Winter Wolf, to speak with his voice, to wear that skin.

Weta gave me a horn, perhaps the oldest symbol of war to the Sarenn people. Women do not wield horns, but I have one. Mine is the breath meant to sound the call. I cannot make men go to war, I cannot stop them once they have.

I am not the hero my country would have wished for, and I doubt I ever shall be. I am, I think, happier that way.

Heroes, after all, seldom have happy ends in our stories.

I still have hope that mine might be different.

#original fiction #prose #wolf's price

[greyskywrites]

Wolf’s Price

[First] [Previous] [AO3] [ko-fi]

XXII. Turning

6.2k

Corvin and Tatton fell over each other coming to see me, each of them talking over the other, furious with themselves—with each other—for not having recognized me. I met them alone, not in the mood to have the same long conversations about my traveling companions that I had earlier had with our mother and brother.

Strange, how distant I felt from my two youngest brothers. By age we simply had never been as close as I had been with Julas, but they had been children when I left, and now they were young men who were complete strangers to me.

They were talkative, boastful young men, I soon learned. Corvin had grown broad, like our uncle Benwulf, and Tatton slender like our father, and like Julas. Though Tatton was young enough that might yet change. They asked so many questions about how I had lived, and I advised them to speak with Julas, because I had questions I needed them to answer for me. “Tell me about our brother’s wife.”

My two younger brothers grew quite hesitant, at that. “She is…” Tatton began.

“Kressosi,” Corvin finished, as if that told me all I needed to know.

“Is she more loyal to king and country than to her husband?” I asked.

They considered that a long moment, arguing amongst themselves. I gathered the answer was that they didn’t know, because no test of loyalty quite like myself had ever arisen before. “How is her son being raised?” I asked.

That, Corvin had a good many opinions about. “The only reason he’s present for Sarenn rites is because Julas insists,” he said, clearly angry. “If she had anything to say about it, he’d be raised with that cold, lifeless Kressosi religion only.”

“There’s a temple now,” Tatton sneered, “a little one, in the town. Julas had it built after he married her. There’s all kinds of Kressosi here now, and that priest comes to eat here every fifth morning.”

“That stuffy shit-eater,” Corvin muttered. “Did you know it’s not enough to have bathed before you go into a Kressosi temple? You have to be ‘blessed’ first. They wave a bunch of incense in your face, about damn choke you to death.”

I did know. I had never had occasion to visit a temple while I was in Kressos—Kaspar certainly hadn’t been pious, and wouldn’t have brought his maidservant at any rate, and neither Muras nor Todd made a point of attending, but Todd had described it for me once, when he was complaining about his priest brother. The incense was thought to purify the air, and though most Kressosi would not confess to believing in spirits or witches, historically its purpose had been to ward away malevolent forces from the doors of the temple. Sarenn did much the same by staking carved elk antlers around sacred areas. Ours just left the air significantly clearer, and required no particular purification of the individual, provided they had washed recently. Public baths in the days before a Sarenn holiday were a crowded nightmare.

“How much influence would you say the priest wields over Julas’ wife?”

“She… doesn’t much like him, really,” Tatton admitted. “But he’s the only Kressosi priest Arborhall has, so she hasn’t much choice.”

“And in the town?” I asked. “How many Kressosi would you say are here?”

“A few merchants, mostly,” Corvin said. “They have houses along the river, and brought their Kressosi servants along with them.”

Not so much influence as I might have feared, then.

“Liana,” Tatton said, and I could tell he had been gathering up his courage to ask me this question. “I heard—Julas was talking about the Wolf’s Son. That man who came with you…”

I met Tatton’s gaze. “He is. And he is here because he is helping me.”

There was a brief, heavy silence as my two younger brothers took that in.

“You turned the Wolf’s Son against the king of Kressos?” Corvin asked.

I nodded my assent.

Corvin let out a breath, sat back. “Father was right, you are more dangerous than anything that lives in the wilds.”

I smiled a little, at that. “Eba always did talk as if I were Liane herself.” I had thought a great deal on our legendary foremother, who skinned the hounds that killed her son and gave their names to her grandsons. Could I ever do such a thing? Name my grandchildren after what had murdered their father?

Perhaps, I thought, it was not so different from the lodge giving me the name Ima Vulgas.

#

I took Veland out in the night, when the moonlight was shining on the garden, bright enough as if it were midafternoon. Julas walked with us, hands clasped behind his back. The frogs were bellowing in every direction, filling the night with sound.

“I know some lords who are chafing at Kressosi rule,” Julas murmured. “More powerful houses than ours. I’ve extended invitations to a few, to come and visit me. I thought it would be best, if word of you could begin to spread through the houses before we make ourselves known to Kressos proper.”

I nodded, watching Veland hunting crickets in the dark. “That would be best, yes. We need some kind of united force.”

“They will want a king, Lya.”

“They will not get one.” Many close cousins of Corasin had been killed after the war, but there yet lived many who could make claims to the throne, if they were bold enough. I would not let that happen, either.

“They will need someone to unite behind.”

“Then they will have to settle for me,” I replied. “I will see it through to peace, but that is all I will do for them.” Uncompromising. The way Corasin had talked, though I did not relish the thought of having learned it from him.

“Lya—” Julas stopped himself. He did not wish to say that Saren would not unite behind a woman with a bastard child who would not give them a king.

I met his gaze. “I’m not fragile, Julas, you can tell me what you really think. That the lords of Saren will look at me and my refusal to give them the heir to the throne, and what they will make me out to be is nothing more than a traitorous whore playing at queen.”

I could not see Julas’ blush in the silvery light, but I could sense it in his posture. “I only mean that they will have expectations, and without those being met, they will not cooperate.”

“I think there are those to whom a free Saren means more than a king,” I said, “even if we do not agree on what it will look like after. I know I won’t be popular. I did not come here with the expectation of being greeted as a savior.” I let out a breath. “What I know is that I have been given a task. It was asked of me, not of my son.”

Julas was quiet a bit, and we watched Veland. “Father should never have let him take you away.” He sounded, for a moment, as if he were sixteen again.

“What could he have done?” I asked. “Who can say no, to the king?” I clasped my hands together. “That is why there can be no more. If there are no more kings of Saren, then there will be no more wives of the king.” I considered my next words carefully. “You should likely take another wife. A Sarenn wife.”

Julas was slow in answering. “She came with the expectation that she would be my only wife.”

“You answered to the king of Kressos, then.”

“I still do, as far as anyone else can know.” Julas let out a breath. “She is not a bad woman. I have… grown rather fond of her.”

“Be that as it may,” I said, “with my companions what they are, I cannot rely on my Sarenness being enough. And with you having only a Kressosi wife, we will both be called into question.”

Julas sighed. “I will think on it.”

“That’s all I ask,” I murmured.

“The beards,” Julas asked abruptly, “was that your work, or theirs?”

I laughed softly. “I think they wished to show me that they were… committed to our course of action.”

“I see,” Julas said, amusement creeping into his voice. “Have you told them how ridiculous they look?”

“Not in quite so many words. I think they know.” I had missed my brother. I reached out, and looped my arm through his. “Did Father really believe that I would come home?”

Julas put his hand on my arm. “The first thing he said, when he heard that you were missing, was that you were still alive. If you were still unafraid of the wild, then there was nothing there that could really harm you.”

“I was afraid,” I said, “dreadfully afraid. But I was determined that if I was going to die, it wouldn’t be by Kressosi hands.”

“We heard such terrible things,” Julas murmured, “about what happened there.”

“I only saw Corasin die,” I said.

Julas stopped where he stood, and looked at me. “You saw him killed?”

“And shed no tears over it,” I said, because I knew this question wasn’t about Corasin. It was about how I could have witnessed that, first hand, and still gone to Muras as I had. “What I wanted more than anything in the world was for Corasin to die.”

Julas let out a breath. “Why didn’t you divorce him, when you had the chance?”

“And be the only woman who had? Returning to my family like that? With anyone else my father might try to marry me to thinking on that, asking himself, ‘if the king wasn’t good enough for her, who is?’ Or asking themselves what the king might do to them, if they married a woman who had divorced him.”

Julas was quiet for a bit, when I said that. Veland came running back to us to show us the cricket he had caught, nearly too big to be safely held in his little hands. We praised him mightily for his skill at hunting, and I gently directed Veland to release it near where he had found it. “It has a life yet to live, to be parent to yet more crickets like it and feed the birds that hunt them, and those larger things which hunt the birds.”

Veland nodded gravely, going back to let the cricket loose.

“Does he know?” Julas asked, quietly.

“He does,” I said. “And he knows that being a king is very dangerous, and I mean to protect him from that.”

“Does he know who made him fatherless?”

“He does, but do you think it matters overmuch, to a boy who was fatherless from the moment he was born?” I watched the silhouette of my son through the flower bushes. “He calls Todd and Muras his uncles. The Kiruk Atsa still consider him kin. What does he need a father for, when he has so much family already?”

Julas wasn’t satisfied with that answer, as I knew he wouldn’t be. He didn’t enjoy the thought of being anything close to kin with Muras. “You’d heard about my son,” he said, changing the subject. “Orvas.”

“I had,” I said, deciding not to tell him what I thought about that name.

“I have a daughter, too,” Julas said, “she’s not quite three years old, now.”

I frowned, puzzled that Corvin and Tatton had not told me about that. “Congratulations,” I said.

“I named her Liana.”

I paused. “Ah.” Sarenn, typically, did not name their children after living relatives, only deceased ones. Julas had believed me dead, and so. He had given my name to his daughter. “How did our mother feel about that?” I had noted her candle in the window, still lit for my return. If it had gone out suddenly, that would have raised a good many questions for the servants delivering meals to a closed door.

“She wouldn’t say she was angry, but I knew she was,” Julas said. He sighed again. “I should like you to meet her, when it is safe.”

“I would like that,” I said.

“My wife is asking questions,” Julas confided. “I think she believes I have a mistress hidden away in your rooms.”

I laughed softly. “Your midnight stroll won’t dissuade her.”

Julas smiled a bit. “I’ll tell her soon enough. This will be… an interesting time for us.” He pulled his arm away from mine, and wrapped it around my shoulders. “I’m glad that you came home.”

#

Muras was still awake, when Julas brought me and Veland back to the room. Neither of them said a word to each other, as I said goodnight to my brother, and took Veland in to sleep. I came back out to find Muras alone, tending the fire, and keeping watch.

I came over to the fire, and warmed my hands. “I still haven’t forgiven you,” I said quietly, “for deceiving me.”

Muras was quiet, listening.

“I’ve let everyone believe there’s no quarrel between us because I need their absolute faith in my judgment of you—but not all is well between us, and I expect you know that.” I had not slept beside him since I allowed him and Todd to join us in the forest. Had hardly allowed him to touch me.

“Is there something more I can do,” Muras murmured, “to set it right?”

“Just know,” I murmured, “if you ever withhold the truth from me again, I won’t protect you from anyone.”

Muras let out a slow breath. “I understand.”

I came to his side, and he looked up at me. I put a hand on his cheek and bent to kiss him. Muras reached out to touch my hip, and I had missed the way he kissed me, soft and careful. I touched my forehead to his. “Soon it will be time to give her a name.”

“You have one chosen already, don’t you?” he murmured.

“Yes.” I shifted, pressed a kiss to his forehead. “There’s a ceremony, to it. I don’t expect it will be particularly grand—we might still be in this room. But all the same, it will be important to have it done.” I smoothed his hair with one hand. “It will be lovely, when it’s long enough to braid.”

“You’ll have to teach me how to do it properly,” he said, and smiled a little.

I sat in his lap, and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “You should have seen how impressed with me Corvin or Tatton were, that I was what made a traitor out of you.”

Muras wrapped his arms around my waist, and held me close. “I can imagine.”

I touched my forehead to his again. “I’m glad,” I murmured, “that you came after us.”

“So am I,” he said, soft.

I sat with him a while before the fire, until I grew too drowsy and knew I had to go to bed. “Promise me you’ll sleep, soon,” I murmured.

“I will,” he said.

I went into the bedroom and found Veland curled up under Lor’s arm, which was not where I had left him. The baby was sound asleep in her cradle. I shed my dress and pulled on my night shift, shivering in the cool air. I slid under the blankets and wrapped an arm across Veland, my hand coming up to rest on Lor’s shoulder.

Lor stirred, and the arm around Veland shifted so that her hand was on my hip. Quiet, a little groggy, she asked, “Was it a good walk?”

“It was,” I murmured. “I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

She mumbled something like assent, and I listened as her breath evened, as she went back to sleep. I would grieve terribly, if something happened to Lor. I rubbed her shoulder with my thumb. Veland stirred in his sleep and shoved about, too warm, pushing us apart. I pulled the blankets off of him a bit, and he settled down.

When I dreamed, it was as a wolf, prowling about the gardens. I was only spotted by one maidservant, who ran back into the castle screaming just before dawn.

Julas, I would note, never again questioned my stories about taking on the wolf skin at night.

#

Lor decided to stay until I had met Julas’ wife, to be sure that this would not dramatically change my circumstances within Arborhall. It was not until a full week after I arrived, when we were running out of ideas to keep Veland occupied in our cloistered rooms, that Julas finally brought her to meet me.

She was a relatively plain-faced woman, with a lovely mane of curly brown hair that was bound only by a Kressosi net, beaded with pearls. I knew it to be a bit of an old-fashioned style, but she looked quite regal in it, which I expected was why she wore it. She was taller than I was, only a little shorter than Julas.

“So,” she said, warily, “you’re the sister come back from the dead.”

“I am,” I replied, and I watched her notice that I had not called her ‘my lady.’ As we were of an equal status, and technically close kinfolk, I was not required to, but I had expected she would not think of me as an equal. Like with Corvin and Tatton, I was alone this time. I was enough of a shock, neither I nor Julas had any desire to also show her that I was in the company of Muras Emiran until we had a better feel for her reaction. “You know my name, but I am afraid I have not yet heard yours.”

“Lyrin Sorell,” she said, clearly displeased to be the one in need of introduction. “Everyone believed you were dead.”

I nodded in acknowledgment, and gave her no explanation. That only increased her displeasure.

“It was quite dangerous for her to return here,” Julas said, quiet.

“Indeed,” Lyrin said, not soothed. “So I’m given to wonder why you’ve chosen now to make your return.”

“Are we kin enough that I owe you an explanation?” I asked.

“I should think so,” she said, annoyed. “You’re the sister of my husband.”

“Then I should think we are kin enough that you owe me your protection.” There were certain obligations, among Sarenn families. Obligations which she would know about, by now. Obligations into which I had just trapped her.

Lyrin paused, and lifted her chin, acknowledging what I had done. “Very well,” she said, letting out a breath. “I suppose we have a great deal to talk about.” She sat in an empty chair, folding her hands neatly in that studied, stiff way of Kressosi nobility. Gods, how I had to try not to hate her on principle. Had to put out of my mind that this was the kind of woman who had always sneered at me in Kressos, whenever I was at Muras’ side. I had never met Lyrin Sorell before, and she was my brother’s wife. As good as my sister.

“I suppose I don’t need to know the particulars,” Lyrin said, before I could begin. “I assume you’ve already told Julas how you survived all this time.”

“I have,” I replied, perhaps a little more coolly than was polite.

“Then all I wish to know,” Lyrin said, “is what you mean to do now that you’re here.”

I considered very carefully how to present this to her, and decided that I would have to be blunt, and ask what I really wanted to know. “To whom are you more loyal,” I asked her, “your husband, or your king?”

Her head turned, as if to view me from a different angle. “What a curious question.”

“Is it?”

She was slow in giving me an answer. “I suppose you mean to present to me a challenge to my loyalties.”

“Not until you answer my question.” Until I could be reasonably sure of her place in this, the less she knew about me and my plans, the better.

Lyrin considered her answer carefully. “I have lived on this side of the Lor for nearly six years. The truth is I was given very little choice in marrying a Sarenn lord, as was my father in sending me here. I was chosen to do so by those who work for King Isaec.” She gazed levelly at me. “I have found my place here, it is true. You are, I think, asking more if I am more Sarenn than I am Kressosi.”

I inclined my head, acknowledging the truth of that.

Her mouth gave a dry twist. “I doubt I can ever be Sarenn to the satisfaction of the people. But nor can I ever really return to Kressos, were I to no longer be married to Julas. I was sent here because I was the kind of lady that few would regret I was wasted on a Sarenn lord. Were I divorced or widowed, I would be expected to remain here, and likely marry another Sarenn man. After all, no Kressosi lord of any standing would have a Sarenn’s seconds.”

Julas met my gaze, with an expression that told me he was well aware of this sentiment already.

“All of that to say,” Lyrin murmured, “my interests are now rooted securely in Sarenn soil.”

#

I saw Lor off in the dark of night, after we had eaten supper. She was outfitted for travel in a new coat and boots, and a horse in Kressosi tack.

“I don’t like that you’re traveling alone,” I said.

“I traveled alone all the way from Azira,” she said. “I can make it across the river, Liana, I promise.” She reached down, grasping my hand. “I won’t promise you that I’ll be able to make it back,” she murmured, “but I will do everything in my power to return here and learn your daughter’s name.”

I watched her ride out of the gates and hugged my arms tight across my chest, powerless to stop her. I wondered if this was how her friend Basim Umad had felt when she left Azira, bound toward some plot of revenge that she might never return from.

I had wanted to kiss her, but I didn’t. It would have felt too much like confirming I didn’t expect to see her again.

My mother came to sit with me that night, while I nursed the baby and considered what would happen now. “I should have brought you home after that woman tried to poison you,” she murmured. “Should have insisted upon it.”

“How did my father die?” I asked. My father had not been old. He had never been given to sickliness. As I had known him when I was seventeen, there would have been no reason to think he would die so soon.

My mother grew quiet, watching Veland play with the toys she had brought for him. “He told me it was an accident,” she murmured. “He was out hunting with your brothers and… there were Kressosi soldiers here, at the time. A full camp along the riverbank.” She let out a shaky breath, rubbed at her hands as if they were cold.

“He was shot, just here.” She pressed two fingers to her side. “He made it back home, he dictated his last wishes, and two weeks later, he died.” My mother was still rubbing at her hands. “The healer advised him to take a dose of poison, to end his suffering, but he wouldn’t. If there was any chance that he could survive, he wanted to take it.” She wiped at her eyes. “Because he wanted to be here, when you came home.”

I looked away out the window, into the black night. “When was this?” I asked, quiet.

“Four years ago,” she murmured. “We were all devastated.”

Four years ago I had still been with Kaspar Heita. I had heard no news about Arborhall, because I was too far from the border, and Arborhall too small an estate for any Kressosi to concern themselves with its succession, even if they did business there, as I knew Kaspar did. I had seen one of his river ships in port, when we first rode into the town. If Kaspar had learned anything of the news of my father’s death, it would have been after I left him, and he would not have deemed it important enough to write to me about. What was a lord, to a woman who had told him she was the daughter of a merchant?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home sooner.”

My mother reached over and grasped my hand. “You’re home now,” she said, and smiled through her tears. “And I am glad of it.”

When my mother left us for the night, to go light her candle in the window—the one still guiding me home—I put the baby in the cradle and persuaded Veland that it was time to sleep. I sang a lullaby for him, rubbing his back while he settled in, and he was asleep before the song was finished.

I stood a moment in the room that I had been sharing with Lor, and considered the possibility that she might not come back. That this night was the last time I might ever see her alive.

I walked out and across to the door of the next room, tapping softly on the wood. Todd and Muras had agreed to stay out of my mother’s sight, for the time being.

Todd opened the door for me, and let me in. “Are you alright?” he asked, quiet. Muras rose from where he had been sitting to join us, reaching out to put a hand on my arm.

I blinked several times, put a hand over my mouth. Todd put his arms around me and I leaned into his chest, and cried. They both held me while I wept, smothering as much of the sound as I could so as not to wake Veland. I could lose them, I could lose them all, and there would be nothing I could do about it. Lose them like I lost my father, like I lost Róana, when I wasn’t even there to say goodbye.

Muras stroked my hair, his chin tucked against the top of my head. “It’s alright,” he whispered. “It’s alright.”

I cried until I couldn’t anymore, drawing in shaky breaths with my cheek still on Todd’s chest. Muras brushed his knuckles across my cheek, smoothing back a lock of hair that had come loose. His eyes were soft. “She’ll come back,” he murmured. “She doesn’t trust us enough to let anything stop her.”

I smiled a little. “That’s what I said to her.”

Muras kissed my forehead. “You’re welcome to stay,” he said.

I shook my head. “If Veland wakes up alone…” I bit my lip, and shifted to look at Todd. “Come with me?”

“I’m going to sit up watch for a while,” Todd said, touching my cheek. “But I’ll come join you, after.”

“I suppose you both mean to sleep in shifts,” I said, looking at Muras. “You still don’t trust Julas.”

“He doesn’t trust us,” Todd pointed out. “Won’t for a while, I imagine. Maybe never. It’s alright, Lya—it’s more important that he trust you.” Todd let me go, and bent to give me a kiss. “Sleep well. I’ll be in after a while.”

I took Muras’ hand, and led him back to my bed. Veland had sprawled across the mattress, so we had to gently rearrange him, and I curled around Veland, stroking his hair. Muras curled around me, an arm over my side. His chest was warm against my back, and I had missed that solid reassurance. I had missed the crowdedness of sharing a bed with him and Todd.

Muras kissed my neck. “I’ve missed you,” he murmured.

I reached down to catch his hand, lacing my fingers through his. “I’ve missed you, too.”

I slept deeply that night, stirring only a little when Muras’ warmth vanished and was replaced by Todd, who reached across me and Veland both to hold us close, or when Veland tossed fitfully in a dream, before he settled with his face tucked into my nightshirt, sighing in his sleep. I could feel the cord of the ivory wolf pendant when I cradled Veland’s head, my hand on the back of his neck.

My children. My wolf pups. I had learned fear, since I left my father’s house. Fear and hate and rage. I could not protect my children from that entirely.

But I could give them the strength not to be ruled by it.

#

It was Lord Alfer, who we had met in Wetasur, that was first to arrive in answer to Julas’ letters. I watched him arrive from my window, pondered that near a year ago that I had met him.

We had then been in Arborhall some weeks, and though we still did not tell many who we were, we now had the ability to move freely about the castle, if not to leave its walls. Certainly, Veland became much more bearable, now having the ability to run around, and play with other children.

I had met my niece, who shared my name. She was a foul-tempered little creature, and none too pleased to meet me. She would much rather have been left alone with her mother, or with the governess who was clearly suspicious of me.

Lyrin had not much warmed to me, since we were introduced. She was not happy, to learn that I had talked Julas into the idea of rebellion. Even less, when she learned that my companions were traitors. I had made Arborhall perhaps the most dangerous place in Saren.

Lyrin joined me at the window, watching Barwald Alfer arrive. “How do you do it, by the by?”

“How do I do what?” I asked.

“Tolerate having more than one lover.” She took a silk kerchief from her pocket to wipe moisture from the window. “When Julas is busy, he’s fine company, but when he grows bored I can’t get rid of him soon enough. Wants to see everything that I’m doing. I can’t imagine having to contend with two of him. Or three.”

Lord Alfer’s little retinue was drawing within the gates. Julas was down there to meet them, greeting Barwald with the embrace of an old friend.

“I’m seldom lonely,” I acknowledged. Anymore, at least. There had been plenty of loneliness when I had been lying about who I was. When they had been letting me believe they were fooled. “It was—strange, at first,” I said. “I hadn’t known, when Muras brought me into his house, what I was stepping into. Todd thought I was trying to angle my way to marriage.”

“You seem like you’d make a better husband than a wife,” Lyrin said.

“How do you mean?”

She glanced at me, her sly fox eyes that I could imagine my brother loving. “Only that I can’t imagine you content to be second to anyone. It’s no wonder you didn’t thrive in Morhall. It was foolish of anyone to ask you to be a lesser wife. You could have easily become the kind of woman who slaughtered her way to a queenship.”

I scoffed, looking back down to the courtyard below. “That sort of bloody mess is for legends. Though, perhaps my life would have been simpler if my only ambition had been securing the throne for myself and my sons.”

“I suppose I’m glad that’s not the kind of woman you are,” Lyrin murmured. “It would make you infinitely more dangerous to everyone around you.”

“And you?” I asked, looking at her. “What are your ambitions?”

Lyrin’s eyes slid to me. “My ambitions are to live a long life, and secure a good future for my children. That’s all.” She stepped back from the window. “They’ll be in Julas’ chambers, soon, if you should like to make your entrance.”

“I hope you’re not unhappy here,” I said softly, as we walked. “I know you said this was not your choice. I hope Julas is at least as good a husband as he is a brother.”

Lyrin didn’t answer me at first. “I’ve not been any more unhappy than I might be anywhere, I suppose. Resentful that my hand was forced, but that wasn’t Julas’ fault. He only told the king’s messengers that he was willing to take a Kressosi wife, and have me be his only wife.” Her eyes slid to me. “Which I understand you are not especially fond of.”

“Only that it might make things smoother for us, if he had a Sarenn wife as well,” I said. “But I won’t insist upon it, if it will sow discord between you.” It would do me no good, to make an enemy of Lyrin.

“Hm.” She clasped her hands together. “I would have the distinction of being first wife, I suppose. And perhaps having another might mean his boredom is split between the two of us.” She did not sound especially convinced. “I am not fond of the idea that my son might be passed over in favor of another. Your father only had one wife.”

One Sarenn wife, I did not say. “He said often that he knew there was no other woman in the world for him when he met my mother.” My parents, I knew, had been exceptional for how much they loved each other. “He said it wouldn’t be fair to marry any other woman, and then have her be ignored. What does Julas do when he’s bored that troubles you so?”

Lyrin sighed, shrugged her shoulders. “It’s only that I’m accustomed to… a certain amount of independence. I was quite a bit younger than all my other siblings, you see, so I spent most of my childhood alone. I don’t think Julas can bear solitude. He can hardly stand silence.”

That did sound like my brother.

Lyrin went on, “And when I already have our children to tend to…” She waved a hand in the air. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps he needs another wife. Not for his sake, certainly, but for mine.” She smiled a little.  

The baby began to fuss in my arms, likely growing hungry. Lyrin waited as I pulled my shawl over one shoulder, so I could nurse with privacy. “It will be time to name her soon, won’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I should like to have the ceremony in the oak grove where I and all my brothers were named.” It was not anything we would need a priest for, though they often attended such rites, if the parents were wealthy and influential enough. My daughter’s naming, I suspected, would be done without one.

Lyrin was quiet a moment. “Julas tells me you left a son in Kressos,” she murmured.

I avoided her eyes. “I did.”

“That must be terribly hard for you.”

I nodded. “It is.” I wrapped my fingers around the locket while my daughter nursed, and let out a breath. “The biggest kindness I gave him was making sure he had a Kressosi name. I know his father’s not a fool. When word does reach him of what—who I am, no one will ever know that I’m the boy’s mother.” Perhaps not even Kip himself. It would be safest for him, that way.

The look Lyrin gave me, I thought might be pity. Perhaps it was only sympathy. “Heaven willing,” she said, “he will be quite safe.” She turned her head at the sound of Julas’ voice, and what I suspected was Lord Alfer’s laugh. “Shall we wait until the girl has finished nursing?” It was common for Kressosi mothers to hide away all evidence of the fact that their children had, in fact, come out of their bodies. I myself had never had much patience for the idea. When my father was away, my mother had used to sit in his lord’s seat and nurse my little brothers while she held audience.

“We’ll be waiting a long time,” I replied, “she has a terrible appetite. Will you help me fasten the shawl?”

Lyrin nodded and pinned it to my shoulder with a brooch, so that I could be assured it wouldn’t fall if my free hand was distracted. That was as much modest courtesy as any Sarenn man could reasonably expect from a woman with a young infant. I lifted my chin, drew in a breath, and went to meet Lord Barwald Alfer again.

When we stepped through the door, he was laughing with Julas over some joke, and both grew quiet when they saw us. “Ah,” Lord Alfer said, inclining his head to me in recognition. “I should have known why you looked so damned familiar.”

I smiled a little. “Thank you for coming, my lord.”

#original fiction #prose #wolf's price

[greyskywrites]

Wolf’s Price

[First] [Previous] [AO3] [ko-fi]

XXI. Iron Teeth

5.9k

The first leaves were in the trees when we encountered our first Hasi clan moving northward. They were Patayan, and not a people with which I was well acquainted, but this clan had traded often with the Kiruk Atsa, and a number of them recognized Veland, who happily chattered way in Trader while we bartered over deer hides and rabbit furs and what little coin we had in exchange for dried fruits and nuts.

Some of the women saw my makeshift sling for the baby, and before we left I was presented with a deer hide covered board that Patayan women wore on their backs, into which the baby could be securely swaddled. It was a gift, so I wasn’t allowed to pay them for it without offense, but I was quite able to give them gifts in return, which I did. My yellow hair scarf and a number of ribbons and hair beads I had taken particularly for this purpose seemed woefully inadequate to me, but the women seemed pleased.

What the Patayan made of Muras and Todd, who were silent and not much involved in the bartering that Lor and I oversaw, I couldn’t have said. I did acquire the loan of a pair of scissors, which I used as I had promised to make them look less like wild men.

Todd came out of it looking rather handsome, but I had to shear Muras quite close before I was satisfied that he didn’t look like a very well-preserved elderly man. Their hair was still too short to braid, but in the clothes they had, and without speaking to them, it would be easy enough to mistake them for Sarenn men.

Because our group was so small, it was easy to pass unnoticed when we needed to. We took wide routes around towns we knew to be common traveling points for Kressosi soldiers, and joined up with larger groups when we could. Fur merchants, mostly—they often traveled alone, and welcomed new people to talk to, especially when we came with two armed men who could deter bandits. Whenever someone asked where we were bound, we always gave a different answer.

Lor looked over the baby every night, though there wasn’t much she could really see. The baby was nursing, and growing, and staying warm, and that was all we could really ask. She would hold the baby while I ate, singing many of the same lullabies I knew.

When the trees were beginning to bud their flowers, we stopped for a few days in a small village that was just big enough to have its own real bathhouse, but not so large that they thought to charge us for its use. We were also given a hot meal we didn’t ask for, and brought into the biggest house available to sleep by the fire. I apologized frequently for not being able to repay them for their kindness, which only seemed to inspire in the villagers a desire to outdo each other in generosity. I gathered they didn’t have many visitors.

We left with as much food as they could spare, and a jug of beer for our trouble. I knew we were drawing closer to Arborhall, because their accents were familiar, and because I recognized the motifs in the embroidery on their shirts and dresses.

The long days that we were alone on the road, I spent most of my time in the saddle teaching my own language, until one or the other of us grew too frustrated to go on. At the very least, I taught Todd, Muras, and Veland the names of every tree and bird, every animal we encountered and the names of their parts. Lor stopped often to gather herbs and mushrooms, and sometimes tree bark, filling her basket. She dried them over our campfire in the evenings, singing quietly to herself in Aziran.

“I should like to go back to Azira, someday,” she murmured. “I miss the noisy markets and the heat. You’d never believe how much color those cities can hold.”

Muras was pondering old homes, too. I’d never heard so much about Pardas as I did those weeks, when I’d find him mulling over something. He thought mostly of his sister, and the nieces he hardly knew. Would never know, now.

“It’s not too late, you know,” I murmured. “You could go back, if you wanted to.”

“Andon would find me eventually,” Muras said. “I made my choice.”

I didn’t want him to resent me, for that choice. It was perhaps an unfounded worry, at least then. He held the baby every opportunity he had, murmuring to her, singing Kressosi lullabies. It didn’t matter now that his family would never accept me, or any of my children. It was a much bigger question whether mine would accept him.

Even if they didn’t, my daughter was still my daughter. They’d have no choice, where she was concerned.

I knew we were closer, and yet—and yet it still caught me by surprise. We had been watering our elk at a stream, and hardly had we gotten back in the saddle but we rounded a hill, and the whole valley spread out before me. I pulled Bili up short, staring.

It was as if Ima Spinna had just spun it into existence for me. The sun had parted the grey rain clouds, casting a honey-gold shine over the valley below. The orchards in which the sheep grazed were in full bloom, I could smell it on the wind.

On my back, I heard the baby begin to stir. Veland shifted in the saddle behind Todd, trying to see around him.

“Is that it, then?” Todd asked.

“It is,” I whispered. Home. Home that I had not seen since I was seventeen, looking back over my shoulder as the king took me away from there. Tears blurred my vision and I rubbed them furiously away, determined to draw it all in, sink into my memory as deeply as I could. My home. Arborhall.

We were yet travel weary and sore, so we rode down into the town, first, to trade away the last of our wealth for a bath and to have our clothes washed. It gave me time, too, to gain a sense for how Arborhall had changed since last I saw it.

With my baby in the board on my back, more than one person greeted me instinctively in Trader, first, until I spoke in Sarenn. They looked at my hair and my freshly laundered dress, and assumed what they would about why a lady was traveling with such a small party, with a newborn babe.

“How difficult,” I asked, “is it to get an audience with the Lord Anarin?”

The merchant’s son I had asked, who was careful to give me deference, and had purchased a drink for me, inclined his head. “For a lady as lovely as you, I imagine not very difficult at all. Lord Anarin holds audience often, especially at busy times like this. If you’re in urgency, though, you might be able to get in with one of his brothers. They’re often about out here.”

Corvin would have been twenty, by then—and Tatton seventeen. I couldn’t know how much of me they would remember, how quickly they might recognize me. “Where can I find them?”

He directed me to a tavern I knew well as a favorite of my uncle Barwald’s, where he had often gotten roaring drunk and been in need of rescue by my father. The merchant warned me I ran the risk of finding Corvin drunk, and I didn’t care for the thought of my brother having followed in our uncle’s footsteps, so I made sure to go with Todd. Being as tall and broad as he was, unless my little brother had somehow overcome our father’s slenderness and our mother’s small height, I did not believe I would need more help.

I thought I might have some trouble determining which was my brother, but I did not.

Corvin, as it turned out, had brought Tatton along with him. It being rather late in the evening, both of them were quite drunk. I knew them instantly, their dark faces and hair, braids to their waists. They were laughing over some joke or other, Tatton clapping his hand on Corvin’s shoulder. I sidled up to the barkeeper, and nodded at them. “Which is more sober?”

“The elder, my lady,” the barkeeper said. “Do you have need to speak to them?”

“If you would please,” I said.

The barkeeper got Corvin’s attention, and he managed to pull himself over to the bar without stumbling too much. “What is it? Do I owe you money?”

“The lady wishes to speak to you, my lord.”

Corvin turned to look at me, then squinted as he tried to figure out why I looked so familiar. “Sorry—did we have some business?”

I put on a friendly smile, since he didn’t recognize me. I wasn’t about to go telling a drunk man I was his many-years-lost sister. He had only been not quite ten, when last I saw him. “I need an audience with Lord Anarin. I was told you might be able to help me.”

Corvin smiled back, uncertainly. “Certainly, my lady—let me just get my brother out of his cups.”

“I think I like them,” Todd said, not having understood a word of what had passed between me and my brother, as Corvin dragged a reluctant Tatton away from the table.

“Wish I could say the same,” I said. I wondered if Julas ever came to drag them away, as our father had.

“Is it just you and—your companion, my lady?” Corvin asked, swaying a bit on his feet.

“No, there are two others and my son. They’re not far away.”

Naturally, the first thing Bili did was try to take a bite out of Corvin. I pulled hard on his reins, scolding him sharply. His antlers were yet just starting in their velvet, he had shed the old ones shortly after my daughter was born, but he still clearly outweighed every gelding around him.

“A formidable beast you have, my lady,” Corvin said. “Not many are brave enough to ride an intact bull.”

“I keep thinking about eating this one,” I said, scowling at Bili. “Gamey though he’d be.”

Tatton could barely stay in the saddle, so Todd rode close to him. I led them back to the inn where we had stopped to rest and eat. Muras had been waiting for us on the step, all his pale hair knotted at the back of his head. He went in to fetch Lor and Veland, and soon enough we were moving up the hill toward the castle.

“Where do you hail from, my lady?” Corvin asked, evidently remembering that he knew nothing about me.

“Not far from here, originally,” I said. “But I come to you now from the north.”

Corvin nodded, uncertain. He was still squinting at me. I let him. He would either figure it out on his own, or he wouldn’t. “It’s—later, you understand, than my brother usually holds audience.”

“It’s later than most lords hold audience,” I agreed, “but I thank you for your hospitality in bringing us here. Even if we could stay the night, and see Lord Anarin in the morning, at a more decent hour, I would appreciate it.”

Corvin considered that. “I should—still tell him you’re here. What name should I give him, my lady?”

I had thought a long, long time on that. “If you wouldn’t mind,” I said, “please tell him Lady Irontooth has come to see him.”

I knew Corvin would pause at that name. I knew Julas would recognize it instantly. We had played at it often as children, Iarantan and Svartkla. Anar’s hounds, and Anar’s sons. I had always, always been Iarantan. The game had ended before Corvin would have been old enough to join in, so though he knew the name, he wouldn’t necessarily understand the significance of my using it.

Corvin took us to the audience hall, and I stood in the center of the room, looking at the chair where my father had once sat. The moonlight pierced the window, falling on that chair. Two black hounds leapt from the top of the chair, teeth bared.

I pulled Veland to my side, crouching to see it as he saw it. “This,” I whispered to him, “is where generations of my fathers and mothers have sat, the lords and ladies of Arborhall. This is where you come from.” There were tapestries on the wall, sewn by my foremothers, but those would have to wait until daylight, when we could see them more clearly.

I heard the footsteps coming at a run. Todd and Muras braced, Todd reaching for the knife on his belt.

Julas threw open the doors to bang against the walls, standing there in the corridor with wild eyes.

He was taller than I remembered. He did wear a beard, now, but a close trimmed one, much shorter than our father had ever worn his. He had clearly been in the process of preparing for bed, but there was still gold wire in his hair, and hawk feathers, so I had caught him early. He stared at me, gasping for breath.

Julas turned his back to us, pulling the doors shut. When he turned back to me, he paid no mind to any of the others. He walked toward me as if he couldn’t quite believe it, hesitating, reaching out his hand as if to touch me, make sure I was solid, real. “Lya,” he whispered. “Is it you? Can it—can it really be you?”

I reached out, and clasped his hand. “Julas,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “It’s me.”

He let out a breath and yanked me into his arms, hugging me tight against his chest. I pressed my face into his shoulder, my tears catching up to me.

“Oh, gods, Lya,” he choked, “Father always said you’d come home.”

#

“Tell me everything,” Julas said, sitting me down at the divan. “How did you get out alive?”

“My lord,” Lor spoke up, “Lady Liana has traveled a long way, and it is quite late. She has a newborn, she needs rest.”

“It’s fine, Lor,” I said. I had waited near eleven years to see my brother again. I could stay up late to talk to him.

“Who is this?” Julas asked, suddenly becoming aware that I had companions. “Everyone with you—”

“Julas,” I said, squeezing his hands to draw his attention. “This is Lady Lor Tyna. She’s a physician and a midwife.”

“Apologies for my rudeness, my lady,” Julas said, and Lor inclined her head in acknowledgment.

“This is my son, Veland,” I said, pulling Veland to me again. “He has lived until recently with the Atsa, he can’t yet speak much Sarenn, but he knows you’re his uncle.”

“Hello,” Julas said in Trader, smiling warmly at Veland. “It’s very good to meet you, Veland.”

Veland smiled shyly, and before Julas could start doing math, I redirected his attention again. “And this,” I said, “is Todd Haris, and Muras Emiran.”

Julas grew very quiet. He gazed levelly at Muras, and I could only imagine what he was thinking, then. “What is the Wolf’s Son doing here?”

Muras recognized the name, and spoke in Kressosi. “You have nothing to fear from us. No one knows we came here.”

Julas answered coldly. “Saying I have nothing to fear from the man who would have killed my sister eight winters ago is quite rich, indeed.”

“Julas,” I said. “Muras has committed treason to bring me here. He means me no harm.”

Julas was skeptical, and he did not take his eyes off Muras. “We never received recompense for your death, because your body was never found. Every other house—but not us.” He looked back to me. “How did you survive?”

I smiled bitterly. “The Winter Wolf carried me away.”

Julas thought I was speaking metaphorically, at first. Lor took Veland away to sleep, and put the baby in a cradle, while I told Julas the story. I told him only that Veland was born while I was with the Atsa, that I had then crossed into Kressos to hide. I told him of Kaspar, and Kip, and how I had come to stay with Muras.

Julas disliked that quite a bit. “You knew who he was, and you went.”

“Do you remember,” I said, “when Uncle Barwald crawled into a den to kill a bear, and emerged without a scratch?”

Julas glanced at the baby, and then at me. “You did not kill a bear, Lya.”

“But I did emerge unharmed.” I met his gaze. “And a man with a Kressosi wife ought not be so quick to shame me.”

Julas let out a breath, and sat back. “So you’ve already heard of that.”

“I suspect I have more to fear from her than from Muras.”

Julas’ mouth pulled down at the corners, but he didn’t tell me I was wrong. “My wife… will have to be handled carefully. You will be a secret here, for at least a little while.”

I nodded. I had expected that. Most especially when we were brought to such a remote portion of the hall. “I have been a secret for some time, I can be a little while longer.”

Julas let out a breath, and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “And after that? How did you come back to Saren?”

I made the story as short as I could, telling him only a little of my encounter with Weta that first time, when I noticed Lor look up, and listen. I told Julas of meeting with the Atsa, and how Veland had asked to come with me. I told him of the wolf dreams, of the lodge at Morhall, of how the Wolf spoke through me. Julas seemed to wrestle with all this, and I was not sure he thought me entirely sane. “So—you can put on the wolf skin, and become a wolf?”

I nodded. “Or else I can send it out on its own, while my body sleeps.” I changed over to Kressosi, “Muras has seen me wear the wolf skin and transform.”

Julas glanced at Muras, who nodded. “It’s true.”

“How did you get here alone, and unfollowed?” Julas asked.

I did not tell him the whole of that. What had passed between myself, Muras, and Todd was not then any of my brother’s concern. What mattered was that we had come, and why.

Julas was quiet when I finished, and he let out a long breath. “A war,” he said.

“We have time to plan,” I murmured. “I don’t intend to make any move, yet.”

Julas nodded, but I could tell he was troubled.

“How is our mother?” I asked.

Julas had forgotten, evidently, that no one else had seen me yet. “I’ll bring her here in the morning,” he said. “She’s well. She’s kept a candle lit in her window for you every night since word reached us.”

My throat tightened. “I would like to see Father’s grave, too.”

“You will,” Julas said, squeezing my hand. “Gods, it still doesn’t seem real, to have you back.”

He would have liked to have stayed up all night talking to me, I think, but Lor insisted again that I needed rest. Julas hugged me, before he left, crushing the air out of me. “I can’t believe those fools didn’t recognize you.”

“They were drunk,” I murmured, “and they were so young, when I left. It’s better this way.” They could see me when they were sober and could keep a secret. After I had seen our mother.

When he left us, he handed me the key to our room. “Don’t open it for anyone that isn’t me,” he said. “I’ll make sure food is left outside for you, in the morning.”

Not quite the glorious return home I might have hoped for, but more or less the one I had expected. “Thank you,” I murmured, and pulled him down to kiss the top of his head. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come home.”

Julas smiled sadly at me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “But you did come home. And I’m glad.”

The door had hardly shut behind him but that Lor brought out a chair and sat herself down, facing the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You may trust that no one in this castle who would mean you harm knows you are here, but I don’t.” She folded her arms, and looked at me. “Get some rest. The rest of us can take turns keeping watch.”

I wanted to argue that she was being absurd, but she quickly told what she meant to do to Muras, and he agreed that it was prudent. “It’s not that I don’t trust your brother to protect you,” he said, “but I certainly don’t trust him not to try something to get rid of me.”

It was an argument I would not win, so I went in to one of the two beds, where Veland was sleeping, and set about getting ready for sleep.

Julas had had no time to prepare for us, so much of the rooms in which we were staying were quite dusty. I wiped down the basin on the vanity, pouring in a little water in which I could wash my face and hands. Patting my face dry with the same cloth I had been using since I left Morhall, I took a moment to pause over my reflection, travel-weary and tired from the late hour.

There was no mistaking, though, that a line of worry I had grown accustomed to had eased out of my face. I was home. And I badly needed to sleep.

It was the first dreamless night of sleep I had passed in I couldn’t remember how long.

#

I woke to hot sausages and buttered bread and strawberries, a pitcher of sheep’s milk and a pot of hot Aziran coffee. The end of our travels had left us all ravenous, and we made short work of our breakfast. I washed Veland’s face at the mirror and combed out his hair, pulling twigs and bits of moss from the strands. He was impatient under my hands, wanting to explore every corner of our rooms, since I had told him we couldn’t yet go outside.

I nursed the baby while Lor combed my hair, rubbing the last of my hair oil into it so that I could shine when I saw my mother again. “When will you go?” I asked.

Lor met my gaze in the mirror. “In a few days, I suppose. Once I’m sure you’re settled. Safe.” She wound a red ribbon through my hair.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“A Kressos in chaos is a Kressos weakened,” Lor replied. “That is the kind of opportunity that you are going to need.”

“And if it means harming the princess?”

Lor’s hands paused in my hair, and she let out a breath. “I let myself get too close to that family,” she murmured. “It’s the children, most of all, that I couldn’t bear to hurt. They won’t be there, though, so I can still bring myself to go and do this. Arabel… Arabel is dangerous. She’s more competent than Andon will ever be.” She finished braiding my hair, tying it off. “Very soon, Andon is going to find out that the man he sent to Morhall to die is simply missing, and me, too. It will send him into a panic, and that will have consequences for everyone on this side of the river. But,” she looked at me, “it means he won’t be paying as much attention to his own side.”

“I don’t like this,” I said.

“I know you don’t,” Lor said, and smiled a little. “Frankly, you’re the worst choice I could imagine to ignite a war again, but I wasn’t advising the Wolf on the matter.”

Three kings would die on my account. I suppose it only made sense, for one of them to be Isaec, but I hadn’t envisioned it this way. “You have to come back to me,” I said.

Lor arched an eyebrow. “Do I, now?”

“You don’t trust anyone else to look after me.”

She smiled then, a real smile. “You’re right. I don’t. You’re troublesome and you need someone like me.”

I took her hand. “Please be careful,” I murmured. “I would grieve so much if something happened to you.”

She squeezed my hand. “Knowing you,” she murmured, “you’re going to have need of a midwife again.”

I smiled a bit. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you love babies a great deal more than fighting.” She let go of my hand, and rose. “Now, let’s have a look at that little one, shall we?” She held out her hands, and as the baby had stopped nursing, I put her in Lor’s arms, cleaning myself up and making sure my dress was buttoned.

“Ah, getting heavy,” Lor murmured, checking my daughter’s pulse. “Strong and warm,” she determined, and listened carefully for her breath. “All seems well.” She cradled my daughter for a moment, and sighed, tracing a thumb over her little cheek. “She’ll grow up fierce.”

I let out a breath. “I can’t decide if she’ll be better off in Sarenn, with the fathers that she has, than she would be in Kressos, with the mother that she has.”

“I think you’re worrying too much about things that you can’t control,” Lor said. “It wouldn’t matter where she was, if she was without a family that loved her.” She kissed the top of the baby’s head. “And much as I resent those two men out there, I could never accuse them of not loving her.”

I could hear Veland in the other room, likely climbing on something he wasn’t supposed to, and Todd practicing his new favorite Sarenn word—no.

“I never felt like I wasn’t enough until I married Corasin,” I murmured. Had never, really, known what it was to hate until I had married him. To want to crawl out of my own skin because I loathed myself so much. He had taught me all of that, he and the other wives.

Lor met my gaze, and reached out to touch my hand. “If you hadn’t gotten to it already,” she said, “I’d have killed that man for what he did to you.”

I smiled sadly at her. “If I hadn’t gotten to it already, you would never have met me.”

“Oh, you don’t know that for sure.” She echoed my sad smile, though, and carefully put the baby back in my arms. “I believe you more or less told me you didn’t believe in fate, when we met.”

“Not that I didn’t believe in it,” I said, “only that what had happened to me was my fault.”

“Hm,” she murmured, “if it was anyone’s fault, it was Corasin’s. And Isaec’s. Kings cause a ruinous mess wherever they go. What the rest of us do to stop them is still, ultimately, because of them.” She reached back, unbraiding her own hair. “Now, I suppose I ought to make myself presentable enough to meet your mother.”

I stood up to let her sit before the mirror, and walked about with the baby, opening the door to find Todd trying to explain in broken Sarenn that if Veland tried to climb that chair to the bookshelves one more time he would surely break his neck and that would grieve everyone very much.

I settled for the much shorter, “Puppy, if you stay off the furniture, I’ll make sure you get some sweets.”

That seemed to convince him of the wisdom of staying on the floor. Veland hopped to the Aziran rug on the floor and came to hug my side. “Ima, I want to go outside.”

“Soon, puppy,” I promised him, stroking his hair. “We have to wait here for a bit, yet. Your ama—my ima—is coming to meet you.” How much Julas would tell her before she reached our door, I couldn’t know. I hoped he would at least warn her that the men with me were Kressosi.

#

My mother, when she stepped through the door with Julas, burst immediately into tears. She had aged a great deal since I last saw her, new streaks of grey in her hair that had never been there before, but her arms were still strong, wrapping me in a clutch of a hug while she sobbed. “Oh, my girl, my sweet girl.”

I was taken aback by how sharply I remembered the smell of her hair oil, infused with cedar because Father had loved it. The perfume on her neck that I had only been able to smell when she held me close. I blinked back my own tears, digging my fingers into the soft fabric of her dress. “I missed you so much, Ima,” I whispered.

She seemed to have to convince herself to let me go, and I think she only did because she wanted to embrace Veland, kissing both of his cheeks and praising how much he looked like me. “Such a beautiful boy, you’ll make your mother proud.”

My daughter began to fuss and cry, and my mother let out a soft sound, scooping her up from the cradle. “Oh, precious little one, look at you,” she murmured. “Who ever saw a baby so beautiful?”

It was hard, to go over it again, what I had told Julas. I left out even more, with my mother. I told her only that I had lived in Jasos for a time, as the clerk of a man who owned a shipping company. I told her nothing about Kip. I told her how I had met Muras, how I was convinced that I would be safe in his household.

She never once looked at Muras or Todd. I saw well enough the flicker behind my mother’s eyes, when I told her their names, but she would not look at them.

I told her only that I had met with Weta and he had given me a gift, the horn, and nothing of his prophecy. Of the Wolf’s demands, I told her a little more, because I could see no way of avoiding it, and I could see how unhappy it made her.

“You’ve only just come home,” she said, “and now you want to risk your life again?”

“It has nothing to do with what I want, Ima,” I said. “It is about what I must do. It is about what will happen whether I want it to or not, when Kressos learns that I still live.” When they learned that I had a son who was the right age. I would kill a thousand men with my own hands before I ever let them harm Veland. “If I must have war, then at the end of it I will have a Saren that is free again.”

I softened, too, the story of my leaving Morhall. Left out that Muras had been the one to drive me to it. Let her believe that he and Todd had come with me straight away, that there had been no quarrel between us. That was my concern, and not one which I wished for my mother’s opinion on. I knew well enough what it was likely to be. “I would not be here,” I said, “if not for their help.” That was not strictly true, and I could sense in Lor’s change of posture what she felt about it.

I did not care, just then. I needed the help of my family, and I needed them to get over their instinctual mistrust and disdain of Todd and Muras as quickly as possible. I was in too fragile a place to risk letting their doubts run rampant. They needed to see that I trusted my Kressosi men, my not-quite-husbands, wholly and without reservation. If I could not trust them, then why should they?

Veland, growing restless, climbed into Todd’s lap, and I did not miss the way Julas grew just a little tenser. Nor, it seemed, did Muras, who shifted in a way I recognized, a way I’m sure he was not entirely conscious of. Preparing for a possible fight.

“Lya,” Julas said, interrupting our mother because he could not bear it any longer. “Is Veland Corasin’s son?”

I met Julas’ gaze. “He is my son.”

“Is he—”

“I will cut the hands off any man who tries to put a crown on my son’s head,” I said. “Even yours.”

Julas was not used to being spoken to that way, not anymore.

“Don’t speak that way, Liana,” my mother said.

“After what I have survived,” I said, “I will speak any way I please. My son is no prince, and he will never be one.” I looked at Julas again. “If there were hungry dogs all about, would you make your son the fattest lamb on the field?”

I knew he would wince, hearing our father’s words again.

“We were people without kings, once,” I said. “We will be a people without kings again.” I couldn’t understand it, how everyone around me had so little ability to imagine it. The various Hasi peoples had only ever barely acknowledged the king, and left to their own devices they had always thrived. Azira had no kings, but a council of men and women who were considered experts in holy law. It was true I could not name many nations who were kingless, but I knew they were there, and they had not fallen to pieces.

And I would force the hand of all of Saren if I must. I was the voice of the Wolf, the voice of winter and death. They would hear me.

“I came here,” I said to Julas, “because I believed I could trust you to help me protect my son. Please do not tell me that I was wrong.”

Julas let out a breath. “It will be difficult, to convince the lords to look past that there yet lives one son of the king of Saren.”

In Kressosi so there was no risk of Veland understanding, I said, “One son of the man who stole your sister away and made her life hell. Would you have your nephew become the same? Become father, to the same?” To have my grandsons be men like Corasin was an intolerable thought.

“I did not mean it like that, Lya.���

“It is all I heard.” I held my daughter close, shifted on my seat. “A king is no one’s friend. No one’s true ally. We will have no more kings.” I pretended at all the confidence I did not have, because I needed Julas to have confidence in me. My doubts, my fears—those belonged to the people I had brought with me. They could see me for the woman that I was.

Everyone else, I needed them to see a wolf.

#original fiction #prose #wolf's price