Estrid rises and falls

Estrid woke in the heart of a stifling silence, stifling darkness, stifling air. Brede had not yet come to bed.

Her back ached. She had learned how to fall asleep on her side by now, but she still rolled over onto her back as soon as she slept, and then she would wake with such an ache…

Brede wasn’t coming to bed, she remembered suddenly. Brede was gone.

She squirmed out from under the stifling blanket and sat on the edge of the bed. She felt the queer tickling inside again. It was the baby. She was certain of it. She had doubted – she hadn’t told Brede – and now it was too late!

She bit her lip before she had quite begun to cry. She was about to behave like a foolish Dane, and she would not–even if he would never know.

She was hungry. That was an ache she could remedy. What she really wanted was a piece of hard cheese. Salty, salty cheese. And a cup of good ale. And garlic. It was the garlic that decided her.

She threw on a cloak over her nightgown, for she would have to cross the court to get to the kitchen. She thought no one would be the wiser.

She crept through the outer bedroom, where Synne slept, and peeked into the hall. The fire was out. There was only a faint glow coming from the open door of the priest’s little room. So, he was still praying.

She and Synne had been permitted, grudgingly on the part of Brede, to remain behind at their house for now, at least until the weather became too hot for it to be borne, or until any sign of danger. Brede’s uncle was considered sufficient protection. Estrid herself thought the man too strange to be reliable, but since she was the one begging to remain, she was perfectly willing to accept the situation.

She had had another magnificent quarrel with Hilda immediately before the departure of the gentlemen. That would soon be mended, of course, but, windows notwithstanding, Estrid could not bear the idea of going to live at the castle when it was held by the three women currently occupying it.

The little Queen herself was easily cowed, but with Hilda and her mother-​​in-​​law battling for preeminence, and with the daily visit of Lord Hingwar, the atmosphere was bound to be nearly as stifling as the air in her stone house. At least here, she herself was queen.

She lifted the trailing edge of her cloak and crossed the floor as quietly as she could manage in her leather-​​soled slippers. She would have to go out through the great doors at the end of the hall, for the little door on the east wall now opened onto the half-​​finished new hall. Thus she would have to pass before the door to Father Aelfden’s room.

She stopped just short of it and listened a long while, but she heard nothing.

She knew that he could enter a sort of trance at times when he prayed. It had chilled her at first to see the way that Brede and Synne would walk around their uncle as if he were not there, and he continue his silent prayers as if they were not. At times Estrid had felt like the only person in the household who was not mad – and at other times the only one who was.

It was for her sake that Brede had convinced the priest to move his books and his candles and his little crucifix into the storeroom off the hall. It meant that they were occasionally surprised when he appeared from behind the door after a silence so long they were certain he was out, but it also meant they no longer needed to see him at his devotions. If he had his door open now, it was only because he did not think he would be observed.

She told herself that she would cross the space before his door as quickly as possible, and then slow to perform the delicate work of opening the great door without making too much noise. Her heart was pounding with her dread of the man, and she began to think she should go back to bed. But the garlic!

She rushed forward – one step, two steps, and then she turned her head and stopped. The breath she had been holding came out in a wail.

She saw the priest in profile, kneeling on the floor directly opposite the doorway, naked from the waist up. He was illuminated by a candle that stood just out of her sight, and so it seemed that his pale body glowed with its own light against the black stone.

The lower half of him was wrapped in a tangle of cloth that had once been white, but the forearms that lay upon his thighs were dark with blood, and the darkness had coursed down to puddle in his upturned palms; and had overflowed his hands and trickled out between his fingers; and had dropped down into the cloth, and down into the folds of cloth that surrounded him on the floor like drifts of blood-​​spattered snow, and down onto the floor.

He had Brede’s profile, Brede’s dark mane, Brede’s height – he was like some pale, emaciated, bloody, bloody, bloody simulacrum of Brede. His body was hunched over his arms, but his face was tilted up; a faint smile lay over his lips, and he was like a hideous, mocking simulacrum of Brede in ecstasy, Brede smiling up and savoring his pain.

She breathed in little panting breaths – one breath, two breaths, and then she screamed – and then she fell.