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greyskywrites · 1 year

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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

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