Sunder (39 page)

For a moment, the cloud of anger departed his face, and her husband drew back as if remembering something. Or was he realizing how wrong he had been? Despite Deorca’s interference, her husband had heard her. He was looking at her now, at least seeing her. His eyes bored into hers, not flicking to the side or rolling above her head. He was seeing her.

“I am your ever faithful servant and wife, My Lord. I beg you to forgive my failures.”

“I have forgiven too much already, Annis. Even if my son still lived,” he broke off, cleared his throat. “You have committed the most egregious treason against all Saxons by releasing that Dane.”

“No, My Lord.” Annis remained on her knees, but drew herself up. “I confess to stabbing Thorstein. I did so because I knew of Deorca’s plan to release the Dane and I needed the keys. The sweet boy was besotted and forgot where his loyalties lay. I sought to stop her, but I was too late. She did it! She released that demon who killed our boy!” 

Shaking with glorious fury, Annis watched her husband’s face as it morphed into a stony mask. She longed to shift her eyes ever so slightly to Deorca’s face, to see the horrified realization that the tide was about to turn, but she knew she must not.

“She is the one who released the Dane, Einar?” Cædda’s chin jutted out, an angry gesture at the slave across the room. “She did?”

Sigbert placed a hand on Cædda’s shoulder and muttered. “My Lord, I implore you to recall your promise…”

“Do you swear on God, Annis?” he silenced the priest. “Do you swear before Almighty God that even though you bore falsehood about your flogging, though you attempted murder on Thorstein, my good and faithful servant, though you have put aside every Godly virtue for petty jealousy, you swear that Deorca is the one who let loose the Dane? You swear she is the source of evil in Shaftesbury?”

Her heart soared as she looked at the expectation on her husband’s face, and the dread on Sigbert’s. The priest had made such a mistake in casting his lot with her, that foreigner. How fitting he should realize that now.

Disregarding the temptation to throw a smile at Deorca, Annis answered her husband.

“I swear, My Lord.”

His face froze. For one brief moment, Annis anticipated his calling for Deorca’s arrest and then throwing his arms around her, telling her all was forgiven. But it was only one moment.

“Then I swear by all that is holy I will cut your head off this day,” Cædda hissed into her face as he gave one more jerk of his head, this one summoning Garrick.

Annis gasped in pain as Garrick’s foot connected with her lower back, driving her face into the dirt, her hands to slow to break her fall.

“My Lord, the Magistrate is still not here to render judgment.” Sigbert’s voice, loud as ever, had a reedy quality to it, a slight tremor in his words.
He is afraid.
The priest was afraid for her. The look of dread on his face had not been for his concubine, but for Annis herself.
How could Cædda be so quick to disbelieve me? Please God, do not let him kill me.

  
 
 “I need the magistrate only to record my judgment, not to make it, Father.” 

Squeezing her eyes shut did nothing to hold her tears or to block out the disgusted faces that surrounded her. Laughter roared in her ears—they were laughing at her—before the high-pitched cackles broke off in tandem with a quiet thump in front of her. Annis opened her eyes.

The long, blood-soaked dagger lay before her. The ugly weapon that had stolen her son’s life. Did Cædda mean to kill her with it? Would it not be just if he did so?

“This is Garrick’s dagger that Deorca stole when she left the city. This is the dagger I took back from her when she returned. This is the dagger I left in our bed chamber. This is the dagger that killed my son.”

She looked up into his eyes as he bent over her, desperate to plead her case, but all she saw was the burning hatred that, until that moment, he had reserved for talk of Danes.

“You will be burned and your carcass left for the birds. You will not be buried with our son. You are not my wife; you are not lady of Shaftesbury. You will die.
”
  
 
 

“No, no My Lord!” The shout sailed across the great hall, flooding Annis’ ears as Garrick pushed her head further down. From the remaining corner of her vision, a cloud of dust arose as Deorca, that beast, skidded on her knees beside them.

“Please don’t kill her. I beg you.”

What treachery is this?
Deorca had been plotting Annis’ death from the moment she entered the city; any fool could see that.

“I have had enough of women’s whims steering this city,” Cædda shouted. “Get off your knees.”

“My Lord,” Deorca’s voice shook and Annis saw her place her hands on ground, lowering herself further. “On the night I brought your son back to this city, I swore to him no harm would befall his mother.”

“A child’s blind love of his mother could never have foreseen…”

“My mother ended her own life!”

Deorca’s sharp retort stilled the room. What a horrible confession to make. And for what purpose?

“I blamed myself, My Lord. Her death was my failure, my sin. You are right, My Lord, children will never understand the world as it is, so they tell themselves stories. And I promise you, with all my heart, the story your sons will tell themselves is that their brother and mother are dead, and somehow, some way, it is their fault. Your grief, your anger will spill onto them, especially…the oldest. Your new heir. On behalf of your son, of your three sons who still live, I beg you to spare the life of the mother of your children. Please spare them the anger, the hurt, and the self-loathing of being without a mother.
”
  
 
 

All was quiet as Deorca finished speaking, seemingly, in a genuine plea for mercy on her behalf. The weight of Garrick on her back fell away, the chill of the air moving in to replace the warmth of his body heat. Annis sat up, drawing in her breath in short gasps as she looked from Deorca’s face to Cædda’s. He was staring down at her, this slave, with a look of astonishment on his face, one of spiritual stirring. He was remembering, finally, how he had once loved Annis. He was remembering how she had mothered their sons and served him. Finally, mercy had descended on his heavy heart.

This is God’s work.

“Father?” Cædda’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Yes, My Lord?”

“Make ready a convoy for my Lady Annis to be taken immediately to Wimbourne Minster so the sisters may give her quarters appropriate to her rank.” Cædda shifted his eyes so they settled on Annis, the sadness in them thinly veiled by the firm set in his jaw.

Maybe one day Cædda will lock you away so he can marry that pretty blonde girl.

The prediction of the false bishop rattled through her head as she looked up at her husband, but it did not fill her with despair. His mercy, the grief emanating from him… it was not his intent to marry Saoirse. Or anyone else. He still loved her. He did. And it took the words of that foreign adulteress to make him see it.

“You will leave immediately.” Cædda said to her. “You will leave now.” On the last sentence, he shifted his eyes to Garrick, who once again wrapped his hands around her arms, but this time more softly.

“Let’s be off, Madam,” he said in his normal gruff manner.

Deorca remained on her knees as Annis was directed toward the door, still shaking and dizzy.
Let her have the priest. Cædda loves only me.
Annis thought as she turned her back on the dark woman for the last time.
My husband will bring me back to his side after my penance is done
.
  
 
 

***

Isabella felt the thickness in the air of the Great Hall fade as soon as Annis stepped past the threshold. Sigbert must have felt it as well, for he let out a long, relieved sigh at her exit. But Cædda had not relaxed, not let go of the tension that bound his whole body
.
  
 
 

“Father,” he barked, not deviating his eyes from the door his wife had just been led out of. “Leave us. And see we are not disturbed. You as well, Selwyn.
” 
 

Isabella snapped her head up, looking to Sigbert for an explanation.
Why does he want to talk to me? Doesn’t he want to be alone now
? 
 

Equally troubled, Sigbert opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking back and forth between her face and Cædda’s before consenting. “Yes, My Lord.
” 
 

Now was not a moment for either of them to disobey or challenge Cædda, but she was afraid to be alone with him. Afraid of what it was he wanted of her in private.
Please don’t go
, she thought, even as Sigbert took slow, measured steps toward the door
.
  
 
 

“Come find me when you are through here, Deorca,” Sigbert declared, loudly and full of confidence. His way of telling her it would be all right. The short winter day was nearly over, and Isabella watched Sigbert’s back retreat into the fading light, each footfall louder than it should have been in the still silent city
. 
 

Cædda waited until Sigbert was completely gone, then walked around the head table, pulling off his cloak as he rounded the far corner. He dropped the heavy garment on top of the table, then sat down in his customary spot at the center, resting his forearms on the wood. All without so much as a glance to Isabella as she sat still on the ground
. 
 

“Sit with me, Deorca,” Cædda waved an exhausted hand, beckoning her to the empty spot on the bench beside him
.
  
 
 

Obediently, Isabella grunted as she slowly rose from her knees, every single joint and muscle rebelling against the movement. Her stifled expressions of pain were the only sound in the Great Hall as she trudged up to the dais, around the long table
, 
and over to the bench beside Cædda—the space normally reserved for Wyrtgeorn
.
 
 
 

He did not straighten his posture or turn to look up at her as she stood next to him. His elbows still firmly planted on the table and his head titled down, it took Isabella longer than it should have to recognize the trembling in Cædda’s shoulders and his increasingly audible breathing as his last desperate attempt to hold back tears
.
 
 
 

She draped her hand softly over the curve of his shoulder, both for support in case her legs gave out and also so he could feel her there, perhaps lessening the devastating aloneness of grief she remembered all too well. It was not appropriate for her to touch him; she knew that. And any other day she imagined he would slap her hand away with a vicious fury. But as she eased herself onto the bench, leaving her legs turned toward the back of the room so she could face him, Cædda leaned forward in tandem with her, his head reaching her shoulder as she sat down
.
 
 
 

Defying her expectations, he did not let out a flood of weeping as he pressed his face into her. Her own tears flowed much more freely as she let her head drop, allowing it to rest atop his, letting her right hand cradle the back of his neck. Even in his shattering grief, Cædda clenched back his sobs, subduing them into pained groans that shook his whole body
.
  
 
 

“I should not have left him,” he wheezed out. “Why in God’s name did I leave him here?
”
 
 
 

The guilt-wracked despair in his voice was a perfect mirror of her father’s on the night he had pulled Mama’s exsanguinated body from the pool.
Why in God’s name didn’t you come home
?
 
 
 

“Hate me for this,” she whispered to him, the sobs in her throat strangling her
.
 
 
 

“I do.” Cædda’s voice was hard, but as he raised his head to look at her, she saw his eyes, still wet and bloodshot, were not angry. “I hate you as I hate Garrick for attacking you that first day. I hate the blacksmith who forged that dagger and I hate myself for leaving it where that witch could secrete it to that murderer!
”
 
 
 

Flinging her hands off him, Cædda rose up and pounded on the table—once, twice, the third time cracking the wood—the sudden shattering of the silence jolting Isabella’s body as if a gunshot had sounded
.
 
 
 

“Why did God send you to save him if he was to die?” he screamed down at her. “Is the sin of adultery so abominable it cost me my son?” His strength finally giving out, the lord of Shaftesbury sank to his knees, his shaking and bloodied hands rising to cover his face
.