“You’re telling me that for the last year, you have been dreaming of eating my daughter?”
“Yes,” Theobald said softly, and despite the fact that he was half a head taller and a couple stones heavier than Egelric, he suddenly found the man quite intimidating.
“Excuse me a moment while I swallow my desire to punch you in the face.”
“Take your time,” Sigefrith said.
“And four nights ago?” Egelric asked Theobald.
“Four nights ago I dreamt again that I ate her. The only time I didn’t succeed was the night she was attacked.”
“And escaped,” Egelric said.
“And the boy stabbed the woman in the side,” Theobald added.
“You didn’t see Bertie in your dream?”
“No. Only her. No fire, either. Everything was the same, except she bit me.”
“We must find out who she was,” Sigefrith said. “Whether or not she was really in the catacombs at some point, we must learn who she was.”
“Could she simply have been a woman hiding in there?” Theobald asked.
“I don’t see how she could get out, if the door was locked from the other side. Nor how she could lock it again from the inside.”
“If there were another entrance?”
Sigefrith shrugged. “Oh – Malcolm told me that when they opened the coffin, there was a plaque on the top of it that wasn’t attached and slid down behind. We found it there, as he said – which certainly does prove, at least, that they had been there – and I brought it back for you to see. Perhaps you might recognize something like it from your family’s past. Excuse me a moment while I go fetch it.”
Sigefrith went out, and Egelric went to stand by the window. “It’s a grim thing,” he said after a moment, without looking around. “Whomever they buried or meant to bury in there must not have been very well-loved. It has a death’s-head on it, and it is written: ‘Hell’. Rather more direct than a ‘requiescat in pace’, wouldn’t you say?”
Theobald paled. “What? ‘Hell’?”
“Aye. Rather ‘H-E-L’, but I’m in no place to criticize anyone’s spelling,” he chuckled.
“That was my grandfather’s grandmother’s name,” Theobald said softly.
Egelric turned to look at him. “Her name was Hell?”
“Hel, H-E-L. It is a Norse name. She was a Norsewoman. But it’s… it’s a pagan name. You should ask Eirik.”
“Was she a pagan?”
“She certainly was at heart.”
“This isn’t the same grandmother…?”
“The same.”
“You don’t think…?”
“Her wish seemed to be never to die…”
Sigefrith found two silent and grim-looking men when he returned.
Chapters
Oh my, is that woman his greatgrandmother?