The dawn comes dark

One of the Sigefriths had taken the other up onto the roof of the tower. It was a difficult climb for the Queen in her skirts, but she decided she would go up. They had opened the bedroom window so that Lady Ragnhild’s soul might fly unhindered, but the bedroom had remained stifling from the heat of the fire, and it still smelled of blood. Now Eadgith thought she could use some air as well.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed as she reached the top of the ladder and her husband’s beloved feet came into view. “I don’t know how I used to climb up here when I was a girl.”

“Honey!” Sigefrith gasped and went to help her up the rest of the way. “I hope you remember how you used to get down.”

She could tell he knew by the way he held her. She supposed he knew by the way she clung to him.

The dawn was coming dark and grim, and her brother was looking off to the east and into it.

Their parents lived to the east, on the flank of the hill that could be seen on a clear day as the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulder. She dearly wished their mother could have been here. Their mother should have been the one to tell him this. Their mother would have known what to say. Lady Eadgith had meant to come, but Hilda’s baby was not expected to arrive until the end of the month, and there had not been time to send for her.

Sigefrith had told her that Hilda’s baby did not belong to her brother. He had told her that Hilda had been raped in her own bed while she slept, and Eadgith could imagine nothing worse that could happen to a woman. Neither could she imagine anything worse for a man than what she was about to tell her brother.

“She had a son,” Eadgith said hesitantly. She still kept a hand on her husband’s hand.

Her brother turned his profile to her, and the shadowed form of his head and shoulder seemed to stand in place of the silhouette of Raegiming hill, hidden in the mist far beyond. She was reminded that he would be lord there one day. In this light he looked so like their father. He looked so old.

“How is Hilda?” he asked.

Eadgith was thankful she had not let go of her husband.

“Hilda is dead, Sigefrith,” she said as firmly as she could. “I’m – ”

She choked and sobbed, and then her husband was holding her again. She was ashamed: her brother should be the one breaking down, not she.

“When?” he asked.

“Perhaps half an hour ago.”

Hilda had died only minutes after the baby had come. She had bled to death as Matilda had – Eadgith had witnessed this too – but it had not been the same. Matilda’s bleeding had been slow but unceasing, and they had fought for hours to save her. Tonight it had seemed that Hilda’s heart had been laboring against them, beating the blood out of her as fast as it could, as long as it had strength to beat. It had not, perhaps, managed to bleed her dry, but it no longer mattered once the heart had stilled. Hilda was dead.

“I thought so,” her brother said and turned his face to the east again. “Somehow I knew.”

Eadgith looked to her husband, as she always did when she did not know what to do or say. It appeared that the correct thing to do and say was nothing, as that was all her husband did.

“Now she will have peace,” her brother said after a while.

“By the grace of God,” Eadgith said.

“Have you told her brother?”

“He’s still in his room,” Eadgith said. “I came first to you…”

“I shall tell him. And I shall tell Haakon. And the girls. And… and I should like my father and my mother to come…”

Sigefrith nudged her arm, so Eadgith knew she should go to her brother. And still, when he embraced her, she was ashamed, for she felt that he was comforting her with his strong arms.

“Did Hilda see her baby?” he asked her. His voice had not changed, but she saw now that the shadows beneath his eyes shone with tears.

“No, she…”

Hilda’s baby had been born slick and lurid with his mother’s blood, but Hilda’s eyes had already closed.

“She didn’t have time,” Eadgith finished weakly.

“A son, you said?”

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course! Maire has him in the hall.”

Her brother started for the ladder at once. Eadgith looked at Sigefrith, but he only murmured, “I shall go down before you. And be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Maire was alone in the hall with the baby. There was another fire, and Eadgith found the room unbearably hot after standing beneath the cool, cloudy dawn.

The infant was awake and alert, and he stared back at her brother for as long as her brother stared.

“He’s quite healthy,” Maire said finally. “Did you tell him about the teeth?” she asked Eadgith.

“No…” Eadgith said.

“What about his teeth?” her brother asked.

“He was born with teeth,” Maire said. “Two on the top and two on the bottom. They say it happens sometimes…”

Her brother reached at once for the baby’s mouth, but he yanked his hand away in horror and gasped, “He bit me!”

“No, no, he didn’t bite you,” Maire soothed. “He was only looking for something to suck. He’s hungry. We have a nurse coming.”

Her brother looked to Sigefrith. She supposed he sought the reassurance that could always be found in Sigefrith’s eyes. Sigefrith did not seem horrified, and that was enough for her. She hoped it would be enough for her brother.

Her brother stared at the baby again. “He looks a little like her brother,” he said. “So, I suppose he looks like Hilda when she was a baby.”

He seemed almost disappointed. Eadgith realized he had been hoping to find evidence of the child’s paternity on its face. But the baby did look very much like Hilda and her brother, and probably her other siblings for all Eadgith knew. The soft hair across the top of his head was a reddish blond, but of course a newborn’s hair was not always to be trusted.

“Did she name him?” her brother asked.

“No,” Eadgith said when Maire did not respond.

“What should I call him?” he asked plaintively. “If it had been a girl we could have called her Ragnhild…”

“What saint’s day is it today?” Sigefrith asked.

“I don’t know,” Eadgith said, “but it’s Crouchmas today.”

“It is? That’s an auspicious day on which to be born.”

“Oh, no,” Maire murmured. “Not here. In Scotland it is an unlucky day, and for all the next year we shall say that Tuesdays are unlucky, because Crouchmas came on a Tuesday this year.”

“Oh, dear,” Eadgith breathed. She wished Maire had not said that.

“It is the day the fallen angels were cast out from heaven,” Maire added.

“Oh, dear,” she whispered and looked frantically at her husband.

Sigefrith was trying to warn Maire with his eyes, but Maire was staring down at the baby. However, her brother did not seem perturbed. Eadgith wondered whether he even had been listening, until he spoke and seemed to prove he had been.

“I shall call him Godwyne,” he said. “Perhaps he will need God as a friend. I shall have him educated, and he shall be a priest. I think it is the best thing.”

“It is a good idea,” Sigefrith agreed.

“I shall go tell Eirik and Haakon and the girls now,” her brother said slowly. “But I don’t want my children to see the child. Eirik may see it if he wishes, before the nurse takes it away. And I…”

He seemed to be waiting for someone to speak, but there was only the silence of sorrow in the room, and the crackling of the fire.

“Then I shall ride to Raegiming myself,” he said. “And bring back my mother and my father.”

This time Eadgith heard the tremor in his voice that had caused her husband to nudge her arm when they stood on the roof and he had mentioned their parents. But Maire and the baby were between her and her brother now.

“Would you like me to ride with you?” Sigefrith asked him.

“No,” her brother said as he walked out. “Alone.”