Deirdre (32 page)

“Father God,” he said, his voice almost haunting the room, “if You’ve a message for me, then I would have it,” He winced at the terse note in his voice. Impatient with the confusion that had descended upon him the moment he’d laid eyes on Deirdre, he would have his answers. But it would serve no purpose to provoke God if He indeed existed. “I listen, though I don’t understand. I am willing, but I am wary. This is Your chance … if You would seize it,” Alric added, more humbly.

Unfolding the list of references that Scanlan had scribbled down for him to consider, he pulled the oil lamp closer and began to search for them. With each illuminated page Alric turned, reverence seeped into him as surely as the scent of burning oil infiltrated his nostrils, not with offense, but with comfort. It went beyond the present to the past, from his surroundings to his mother, for so many of the words were familiar—words she’d read to him or quoted; words she’d chided him with; words she’d leaned upon in her darkest hours; words that had made her what she’d been in Alric’s heart: an earthly angel.

The miracles of Christ were a wonder and not new to Alric, but it was Jesus Himself that intrigued him—the man, the motivation, the discipline, the compassion. Here was the model, not just for a husband,
but for a warrior and a king. Here were strengths that Alric had contemptuously looked upon as weaknesses. When had the story changed? he wondered, turning page after page.

Or perhaps it wasn’t the story at all …

The morning of the wedding, Galstead brimmed with guests and their retinues. Those who could not be lodged within the walls of the fortress were housed on the common without: a meadow alive with tents and banners fluttering in the breeze. Aromas of roasting meats and wood smoke shouted welcome as loudly as Lambert’s heralds.

Deirdre, clad in Helewis’s remade gown, nervously awaited the hour of noon. Abina clucked and fussed over her hair, which had been woven with gold-shot ribbons of deep blue and strings of pearls into a single braid. On the bed lay a cloud-thin mantle of silk, embroidered by Alric’s late mother.

“How I wish Orlaith were here to see you.” Abina sniffed, as she draped the ivory mantle over Deirdre’s head.

“I am sure she smiles down from heaven as we speak.” Deirdre placed a hand over Abina’s drawn and wrinkled one. A blade of emotion rose to her throat. “And my mother, too.”

But would Banba be as pleased, seeing her daughter forced into a loveless marriage with a heathen prince?
Heavenly Father, give me strength to do what I must
. How could Scanlan possibly be so enthusiastic, knowing what lay ahead of her? His assurance to trust in God floated somewhere in a sea of second thoughts and fear.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.…
” It was the answer she dwelled upon each time her anxiety threatened to overwhelm her with the urge to steal a horse and make way for the Welsh border at breakneck speed.

“I just wish Alric were here already.” Abina fretted.

He’d left for Chesreton sometime in the night after Deirdre sent him away, angry over her insistence of holding him to his word regarding the marriage bed. Lambert had sent Gunnar for him as soon as the
king heard the news and was in a dreadful humor over his son’s disregard for their guests. When Gunnar returned after a full day’s gallop there and back, he reported that Alric had taken a small boat downriver but assured the king that Alric would arrive in time for the wedding. Many crude jests were made by the men about the nervous groom spending his last nights sowing wild seeds, while the women looked at Deirdre with a mix of curiosity and pity.

“But if he says he will be here, he will be,” the old nurse assured herself when no comfort came from Deirdre. “He may look dirty and ragged as a Pict,” she stipulated with a voice of experience, “and if he does, his mother will haunt him the rest of his days, and so will I.” Abina bristled at her image in the mirror. “But Alric never breaks his word. Never. He has a heart of gold, my pretty muirnait—a little tarnished by life here at Galstead, but nothing your kind and loving heart cannot polish to a bright sheen.”

Outside Abina’s lodge, a syncopated rustle of skirts and hurried footsteps approached, followed by the entrance of Helewis, pretty in a rose gown smocked with green thread about the yoke. “Alric is here!”

Deirdre’s heart dropped to the floor and sprang back just as quickly where it beat from her chest with every emotion from fear to anticipation.

“Did I not tell you so?” Abina’s face glowed with triumph, as well as relief.

“Even more peasants have gathered outside the walls,” Helewis said between gasps. “They cheered Alric all the way to the gates. Never have I seen such a—” With a stricken look, she weaved dizzily Abina and Deirdre both rushed to grab her before she fell.

“What is it?” Deirdre fought back alarm. “Are you ill?”

“Come, dear, sit down. You have overwrought yourself, running in this dry summer heat. If it doesn’t rain soon …” the nurse trailed off rather than address that possibility Never had Albion seen such a spell of dry weather.

Helewis trembled as Abina mopped her face with a wet cloth.

“I … I think it’s the excitement,” the princess said in a quivering voice. “To have a sister and a friend and …” She leaned against Abina.
“It’s making me awfully sick. I lost my breakfast.”

Deirdre met Abina’s sharp glance over Helewis’s head. “It could be the heat and all those layers of dress,” the nurse said. “I’ll fetch you some mint to chew.”

If it wasn’t the heat, it could be serious trouble, Deirdre thought. By Helewis’s own admission, Ricbert had not visited her bed since Yule. Perhaps Deirdre’s pity for the unrequited love between Gunnar and the princess had been for naught. If so, she feared for them. “When came your last season?”

Helewis looked up startled. “I don’t know … I mean, I don’t remember. I’ve had no reason to account for it.” Meeting Deirdre’s compassionate look in the mirror, she dropped her head. “But I think it was before you came to Galstead.” She bit her lip as the reality gripped her and fear stirred the creamy flesh of her brow. “Oh, my!”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Deirdre pledged. But it could only be kept so long.

“But what can I do?”

“Have faith.” That seemed to be the message of the day, she thought wryly “‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,’” Deirdre quoted. “That promise of hope has carried me through, and it will do the same for you, Helewis. I don’t know how. I just know that it will.”

And she prayed that it was an all-encompassing promise, one that covered human weaknesses as well as faith’s strength, for Ricbert would leap at the chance to rid himself of the marriage and demand a terrible blood price, mutilation at best. Faith, she’d seen women with their noses split for committing adultery Helewis would never survive such humiliation, considering that Ethlinda and Ricbert had already driven her to despair over her round figure and plain looks.

Abina returned to the lodge with fresh mint from her garden. “I don’t know what is going on, but Alric insists that Lambert and his guests meet him in the meadow beyond the town or there is to be no wedding. That boy has a will of his own, and it’ll be the death of me.” She looked apologetically at Deirdre. “I’m afraid he wants you and the
priest, too. Imagine, hauling us all out and it nearly midday. I hope your dress isn’t ruined by the dust and dirt.”

Reeling from one shock to the next, Deirdre pulled Helewis to her feet and hugged her. “You help me through today, derling, and I promise to stand by you tomorrow.”

As they joined the royal ensemble gathering outside the gate, Deirdre was taken aback at the number of peasants being restrained by the guards. Helewis was right. It was as crowded as a fairground. Was
she
to be the entertainment?

“What do you know of this, young woman?” Lambert demanded upon seeing her.

Ethlinda fixed an icy, onyx gaze at Deirdre. “I suspect, milord, that you should be wary of insurrection. Your Christian pet and bastard stir your own people against you.”

Deirdre flushed with anger. “Don’t be ridiculous. These people have come to see the wedding.”

As if to back her word, a yeoman called out to Deirdre from just beyond the gate. “Princess! You said to come and here I am … along with my good wife.”

Deirdre looked hard at the man, trying to place him.

“How the devil are we to feed them? We hadn’t prepared to feed so many,” Ricbert complained.

Lambert sweated profusely in his purple and scarlet robes under the peaking sun. “I’m cursed if I know. We’d have one more bullock, if your mother hadn’t set it afire and nearly all of Galstead with it.”

“Someone must have spilled oil in the temple,” the queen rallied in her own defense.

“Maybe it was the gods saying they’ve had their fill of beef,” Lambert derided.

The queen held her burned hand to her side as though it were nothing. By all accounts, the fire had flared up when an altar lamp overturned. Just as quickly it was beaten out, but not without causing a panic.

Alric’s leaving, the temple fire, Helewis, and now the crowds … Deirdre shuddered to think what was next as she kept looking at the
friendly peasant. Suddenly she recognized him as the man who’d stopped them on their way to Galstead, the woeful farmer whose wife had lost a child by carrying water into the fields so late in her term. She’d given him her cross.

Ricbert scowled. “I don’t think it’s wise to go among them.”

“’Twould do you well to listen, husband,” Ethlinda chimed in. “Juist and I saw an uprising in the entrails of the slain bullock.”

“Before or after you fried them?”

“Nonsense!” Deirdre ignored the king’s ready quip. He had the gift of the trouble-making Brichriu’s tongue, though according to Abina, it had not always been so. The king had turned most bitter, with a penchant for stirring conflict between his associates, after Orlaith passed away.

No matter how tempted, Deirdre resisted showing her humor at Ethlinda’s expense. While she did not understand the queen’s beliefs, she respected her right to them. Scanlan’s admonishment to love the sinner and hate the sin was far more of a challenge.

Deirdre marched ahead of the royal family without guard or escort through the gates and straight to where the farmer held up the necklace she’d given him. As she did a trill of excited chatter—“There she is … it’s the princess,”—flowed through the crowd. Her single invitation had multiplied a hundredfold, she thought, disconcerted.

“It was good of you to come—” she spoke first to the farmer, then to the rest—“
all
of you.”

Presenting her hand to the man brought about a collective gasp among the onlookers. Surely he was not fit to kiss the feet of a princess, much less her hand.

“We are all equal in God’s eyes,” she assured him when he hesitated.

Awkwardly, the yeoman kissed it.

“And you, mistress,” Deirdre said to his wife. “I pray your strength has returned, as your husband told me of your misfortune.”

“Well enough, milady,” the woman answered, her raw-boned features giving way to a smile that took years off her life-hardened face.

“I told ye I knew the princess,” the man boasted to his surrounding fellows.

“I, my husband to be, and the king of Galstead welcome you all,” Deirdre shouted for the sake of being heard. “We are overwhelmed by your numbers but will share what we have prepared with all, thane and serf alike.”

A hearty cheer went up in increments throughout the gathering. “Long live the king!”

“And Princess Deirdre!”

“And Prince Alric!”

Ushered by the cheering throng, the royal assembly proceeded to the meadow beyond the village. There, astride his stallion prancing back and forth along the stream that trickled through Galstead from the mother cliff at its back, Alric sat. With the sun dancing on his hair and playing upon the gold threads and trim of his tunic he looked like a young god. Even Dustan looked as though he could take flight, like the legendary Pegasus in gilded tack, with his black mane and tail flying like banners.

Thick muscled arms dazzling rich in splendor, Alric rode to meet the royal entourage. With a graceful leap, he dismounted and bowed low before his father. “Milord.”

“What in the name of Woden is all this about?” Lambert clapped him on the shoulder. “Where have you been?”

“Learning what it takes to be a good husband.” Alric rose and turned to Deirdre. Kneeling, he took her hand to his lips. “Milady.”

Deirdre said nothing. How could she with her heart quivering in her throat and her belly doing a giddy little jig?

“You spent the last two days on that?” Ricbert’s sneer was incredulous. “You were born with that, I thought.”

Alric allowed the crowd its laugh. “I said a
good
husband. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

A riot of humor spread from where they stood to the outreaches of the assemblage, turning Ricbert as scarlet as Deirdre felt.

Ethlinda stepped forward. “And this involves routing our guests to the meadow like so many bullock?”

“I decided to choose a ceremony involving water rather than fire. It’s safer.” As Alric spoke, Father Scanlan broke through the circle of the guards. “Ah, there you are, priest. Now we can begin.”

“Here … now?” Lambert stammered.

Alric grinned. “Aye, Father. There’s too many to fit in the chapel.”

Deirdre grabbed Helewis’s arm and felt her new friend return her anxious squeeze. “Trust,” the young princess whispered in her ear.

Aye
, Deirdre told herself sternly Except that trusting in God wasn’t the problem at the moment. Her knees were of more concern. How could she marry a man who was as unpredictable as the wind?

W
hen Alric remounted Dustan, every eye was upon him, every ear strained to hear. Deirdre thought sure she could hear the heartbeat of the wind itself. It, too, awaited with bated breath.