“I’ve heard some interesting news about you,” Sigefrith said once the formalities were behind them.
He turned his chair around, making the legs shriek across the floorboards. Ethelwyn was wound up so tightly he winced all the way to his chair.
“About me, lord, or about my wife?”
Sigefrith laughed. “I may have heard some interesting news about your wife, as well. You know Young Sigefrith can’t keep a secret, and Eadie’s always hungry for news from Raegiming. Well!”
Sigefrith plunked down onto his chair, but having underestimated the range of his long legs, he scooted himself back a foot or two with another unearthly shriek.
Ethelwyn was beginning to feel sorry for Ralf. He quietly nudged his chair against the wall and sat well back on the seat.
Sigefrith slapped his knees and rubbed his hands on his trousers. “Congratulations! I’m glad for you two. Give your wife my regards.”
Ethelwyn bowed in his chair. “Thank you, lord.”
“But you’ve probably guessed I didn’t send for you on that account. Unless you believe you deserve some credit for the part you played?”
Ethelwyn put on what he hoped was a sly smile. “With all humility, lord, I would not go so far as to say the pleasure was all mine.”
Sigefrith chuckled. “Lacking the lady’s side of the story, I shall have to take your word for it. But the news I heard came from Thorhold, not Raegiming.”
Ethelwyn sat up. He knew now why the King had wanted to see him. It was not about Egelric—not unless Egelric happened to be at Thorhold at that moment, and if he was…
“I heard the young Baron has asked you to be his steward.”
No, it was not about Egelric at all.
“Yes, sire. He has.”
Sigefrith folded his arms and sat back, as if his scrutiny of Ethelwyn required a greater distance even than that prescribed by the length of his legs. He was silent for so long that Ethelwyn feared he was expecting an explanation.
“His… his current steward is in very poor health, lord.”
“So I heard. His brother is my valet. One gets intimate with a man who holds a blade to one’s throat every second morning.”
Sigefrith’s face was distressingly sober until he winked. Ethelwyn flushed and stammered, “Oh—yes—I’m certain.”
Sigefrith unfolded his arms and sighed. “By God, I am apparently condemned to be forever surrounded by Ealstans…”
Ethelwyn lifted his chin. “It is difficult to get clear of us around here, lord.”
Sigefrith rubbed his face wearily and peered out at Ethelwyn from behind his hand. “I meant no offense to you or your own family, Ethelwyn.”
“I know whom you mean, lord. A distant cousin.”
“Sir Octopus Ealstan, my son calls him. A tentacle in every pie. You realize that a great part of your duties will consist of effacing the influence of Sir Osfrey?”
“My duties would consist of serving the Baron, lord. I will not deny that his father’s interests were not always well served. However, I have not yet accepted the position.”
Sigefrith lifted his head. “Haven’t you? It’s quite an opportunity for you and your family.”
Ethelwyn was silent. This was where he could ask about Egelric. But this was also where the King could bring the subject up, and if he did not, perhaps there was nothing to say.
“Don’t be coy, young man,” Sigefrith said. “By God, don’t make me admit I was glad to hear it would be you. I’ve heard much good about you.”
Ethelwyn waited. If the King would just ask what was holding him back…
Sigefrith’s amiable expression began to harden. “This is a critical time for us, you realize. The Baron means to do right, but he’s young. He needs an efficient, disciplined, honorable man looking after his affairs.”
“Lord—”
Ethelwyn spoke out suddenly, almost interrupting the King. Sigefrith tilted his head and waited.
“I beg your pardon, but it’s that… I have other duties at present which I cannot simply abandon…”
“I think the Duke will find a replacement readily enough. Listen, Ethelwyn, you’re acquainted with Sigefrith’s cousin Sir Baldwin, aren’t you?”
Ethelwyn blinked. “Yes, lord.”
“One would think a fortified house at the frontier would be the worst place to put such a sociable fellow. But I need my border defended, and he’s the right man for that. Neighborly enough that no one can cross the border without being invited in for a drink, and with enough military experience that he’ll recognize an attack brewing in good time. Do you see?”
Ethelwyn nodded, even though he did not see what it had to do with him.
“Well, Thorhold is another of my borders, but to defend it I need another sort of man entirely. The sort of encroachments I fear there are not of the military variety. Do you see?”
Ethelwyn nodded again, more hesitantly this time, for he was beginning to truly understand. A royal command was brewing. He would not be allowed to refuse.
Sigefrith leaned closer. “Those who serve me well are well-rewarded, Ethelwyn. You may ask Sir Eadred about that. I want you to understand that you will be serving not only the Baron, but myself. I want you to understand that your potential is not limited by what the Baron can offer his steward, but what I can. Ask your friend Ralf about that. Who, I might add, praised you highly.”
“Lord, I…”
Ethelwyn’s mouth was dry, and swallowing did not help. His palms were wet, but unlike the King he could not bring himself to wipe them on his best hose.
“…am honored by all this… recognition, but I find it difficult to…”
He glanced up, and the expression of benevolent patience on the King’s face was just enough to push him over the edge.
“I simply wonder what has become of my former employer. Sir Egelric, lord.”
Sigefrith sat back and sighed. He rubbed his knees, in disregard of his trousers. “I thought you might ask me about that.”
“I simply wonder whether Sir Brede and Sir Eadred know any more?”
The King turned on Ethelwyn a look that was no longer so benevolent nor so patient, but he said, “Egelric and Finn are alive, and probably in the vicinity of Leol.”
Ethelwyn closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Now his lashes too were wet.
Sigefrith’s tone turned grim. “Do you want to know more?”
Ethelwyn looked up. “Yes, lord. Anything.”
“Lady Maire’s brothers found him on the sixth day of Christmas.” He paused, letting this sink in. “Do you want to know more?”
Ethelwyn nodded. His heart was beginning to pound, dreading an event that was already two months old.
“They nearly killed him, Ethelwyn. I daresay they intended to. They bent him over a post and ripped the skin from his back with a scourge.”
“Oh my God…”
Ethelwyn propped his head in his hands and stared between his knees at the bare boards of the floor. He did not remember much of his bedridden boyhood, but he realized he must have read stacks of martyrologies to equip his mind with the images that flooded into his thoughts now.
Sigefrith sat quietly for a while, leaning against the table, idly sliding stray slips of parchment over the wood. Ethelwyn was grateful. He was master of himself when he lifted his head again, though shaken. Perhaps a little pale.
Sigefrith said, “He was your friend.”
“My closest friend, lord.”
Sigefrith frowned slightly, then shook his head in a gesture of impatience that seemed directed at himself. “Do you want to know more?”
“Anything, lord,” Ethelwyn pleaded. He wanted the truth, however terrible.
“Then, Ethelwyn, I must ask you to give your word that you will not speak of this to anyone but those few men privy to the information. In particular that excludes wives and other relations—some of whom, as we were discussing, cannot keep secrets. I require discretion of my men, and you and I shall get started on that right here.” Sigefrith stubbed his finger on the corner of the tabletop.
“I give you my word, lord.”
Sigefrith frowned and picked at the edge of a book cover, as if still making up his mind. “I tell you this,” he grumbled, “because I believe a man deserves at least one friend with whom he may speak candidly of his past. I tell you this less for your sake than for his.”
Ethelwyn did not know what to say. “Thank you, lord.”
Sigefrith grunted. “Tomorrow at the Audience, my reeve will request a writ lifting the sentence of banishment pronounced against Egelric, in light of new evidence that exculpates him.”
Ethelwyn sat up. He had been imagining something worse than the scourging. And now the King was telling him something better than he had dared hope all these months.
“There’s no new evidence,” Sigefrith said, anticipating Ethelwyn’s question. “There was never any evidence to begin with. I banished Egelric because I needed an excuse to send three of my knights across the border without alarming Young Aed. Egelric was with Brede and Eadred all this time. My knights, you are beginning to perceive, are sometimes called to serve me in ways that have nothing to do with leading troops into battle. Egelric has served me by sacrificing his reputation.”
Sigefrith paused as if awaiting comment.
Ethelwyn pressed his fingertips against the knot of pain that was swelling behind the bridge of his nose. He said softly, “You knew he was innocent all along.”
“Innocent, now?” Sigefrith said sourly. “He was accused of being responsible for Maire’s crimes. But considering what he did to her just before she acted, I am inclined to believe he was. Morally, if not legally.”
“Lord, did you never consider that her first act consisted of going to Egelric and waking him in his own bed?”
“And then he raped her in self-defense?”
“It is not rape if the woman goes to the man.”
“And if she goes only because she heard a noise in the house and was frightened? And if she goes and has second thoughts?”
“It is not rape if she likes it! It is not rape if she comes!”
Sigefrith twitched. His hands closed into fists, his square jaw clenched, and he exhaled a slow breath through his nose. Ethelwyn so reviled that woman—that so-called victim—that he had forgotten he was speaking to a king. He had gone too far.
“Though lacking the lady’s side of the story,” Sigefrith said in a steely voice Ethelwyn could not have imagined for him and his warm baritone, “I am nevertheless disinclined to take his word for that. The pleasure, I daresay, was all his.”
As his dread rose, Ethelwyn realized Sigefrith had resurrected his own feeble joke of earlier, turning it all hideous and unholy against its maker. Ethelwyn prayed he had not just spoiled Egelric’s chances.
“Nevertheless,” Sigefrith continued in a growl, “I promised him that if he served me well at Ramsaa, he would be redeemed under the law, and would be allowed to return to Lothere to make the most of what reputation he has left. I wonder, though—you who know him—will he want to?”
“Lord?”
“He will not return a hero. And he will not return to that castle. You know better than anyone that he held that castle in fee from the Duke, and it has been withdrawn. And while Egelric will still be my knight, I will not have him placed above Aengus in any way. I don’t even want him sitting a God damned horse that’s taller than Aengus’s, do you hear?”
Ethelwyn nodded. Sigefrith grunted, and his expression softened.
“Now, I’m certain we can do something for him. My daughter and her husband, with the incorrigible generosity of youth, have offered him land behind Dunellen. And he has always been friendly with my father-in-law, so there may be a place for him at Raegiming if the old goat ever returns. But for him the old days are done. And Egelric is a proud man. Will he want to return to this place—where he was not always well-liked at the best of times—scarred and beaten, under a cloud of gossip, and, simply put, less than he was?”
Ethelwyn whispered, “Yes.”
Sigefrith lifted a brow. “You say that without hesitation.”
“I don’t know, lord—I can’t speak for him. I can’t say whether he’ll want to stay. But he’ll want his children. And with Iylaine and his grandchildren here…”
Ethelwyn could not presume to say Egelric would stay in the valley for Iylaine’s sake. But he believed he would.
“Lord, you said he was at Leol?”
Sigefrith grunted and straightened a few parchments in a gesture that looked worryingly conclusive. “That’s where he said he was headed. Brede couldn’t promise he didn’t go elsewhere and say that to prevent us from ever finding him again.”
“I wish to go to Leol, lord.”
Sigefrith dropped his pages and sighed. “I am sending men in search of him as soon as the writ is read at market on Saturday.”
“I wish to be among them.”
“I believe you were just telling me you have duties that you cannot simply abandon?”
Ethelwyn forgot he was wearing his best cowl and nervously shoved his hand inside to rub his collarbone.
It seemed Sigefrith did not need Sir Malcolm as much as Ethelwyn had always imagined. All alone the King was capable of remembering every idle word a man spoke, and like the Lord God, might turn it against him on the judgment day.
“I hope, lord,” Ethelwyn said humbly, “that it will not take more than a day or two to find him there. Perhaps a week’s absence.”
“And if a week turns into two and into three? I tell you, Brede is not convinced Egelric ever meant to go there at all. Ethelwyn, the planting is starting. We need you here. I have men I can spare—men who know the roads and the city better than you.”
Ethelwyn imagined a lone and battered Egelric learning that the King’s men had been seeking him on the roads and at the inns. No matter what news he believed they carried, Egelric would never stop meekly to be met. Surely he would go skulking off into the wilderness. Surely no man would ever find him again.
“Please, lord, let it be I. Egelric is a proud man.”
Sigefrith said quietly, “Not so proud any longer.”
“Then still more I beg you.”
“And if I forbade it?”
“Then, lord, I must… think of my family.”
If Sigefrith had sounded annoyed when he asked it, Ethelwyn might have lost his nerve and stopped there. But the King seemed merely curious, and in spite of all that had gone before, his expression was patient and mild.
Ethelwyn continued, “And Egelric is my family. He’s like a brother to me. Which means we’re stuck with each other, even though we have nothing in common, and we often quarrel…”
Sigefrith appeared to be studying the embroidery on the hem of his tunic, but the corner of his mouth quirked up, and Ethelwyn managed a quavering laugh.
“And my God, sometimes he frankly torments me. But when that dog bit me, and I was mad, and I never woke for four days… Egelric knew I cannot stand to be untidy, so he propped me up and shaved me with his own hand. And I don’t remember that at all, but, lord, one never forgets something like that, either.”
Sigefrith sat up and rubbed his hands on his knees, smiling a little sadly. “One does get intimate with a man who has held a blade to one’s throat, as I said.”
Ethelwyn’s relief burst out of him in a nervous laugh. “Yes!”
“Very well, then, Ethelwyn. You have my permission to go seek him in Leol. But you shall not even intimate that you are taking a trip until after the writ is read on Saturday. Understood? And when you return I expect you to accept the Baron’s offer.”
“Yes, lord. Thank you, lord.”
Sigefrith sat back and gazed past Ethelwyn at the open window. Through the haze of the valley, the peaks of Thorhold could just be seen by the gleam of their caps of snow. But the hill slopes nearby were dotted with wooly white specks of sheep, already moving up into the high pastures. Spring was coming. The time for sowing was almost here.
“I know what it is to have a scoundrel in the family,” Sigefrith said. “God grant they both come home.”
I don’t see how Aia living with her sister’s family could be bad. What harm could that cause?
Chapters
oh. Beautiful. So many wonderful things in this chapter! First, is Mouse having a baby? Is that what they were talking about? Second, YAY!!!! Egelric has a chance to come home. Its small, but its there. And I nearly cried when Ethelwyn called Egelric his brother.
Your pictures are just breathtaking.