The Redeeming (42 page)

Aldous labored over crackling laughter. “And I made good use of him. And well he did my bidding, did he not?”

That Christian could not argue or excuse, not after all that had happened, all who had died, all who might yet die.

Aldous slid his gaze to the nearby goblet. “Wine.”

Christian raised him up, held the rim to his lips, and slowly poured the liquid onto his tongue. Minutes and many labored swallows later, Aldous held up a trembling hand.

Christian eased him down and returned the goblet to the table.

“Ah, my son,” Aldous bemoaned.

Unsettled by the edge of affection in his father’s voice that he had not heard in many years, Christian looked near upon his sire.

“There can be no redemption for me,” Aldous said, “but still I would make right what I can while I can.”

Christian nodded. “The priest awaits your confession—”

“I do not require a priest. I require you.”

“I am no longer of the Church.”

Aldous snorted. “Were you ever truly of the Church? Ha! Know you how much it cost me to keep you at the monastery after you allowed yourself to be found beneath a harlot’s skirts?”

“I am sorry.”

Aldous expelled a shaky sigh. “I am the one who is sorry. Sorry for all I have wrought, for all I wrought through Robert. And Geoffrey, whom I indulged too often and whose behavior I excused many too many times.”

Christian stared at him, regretting that only now, with the end so near, his father should speak of such things.

“I knew he could be cruel, sometimes more cruel than Robert, but I believed it was because he grieved for your mother, and so I told myself he would grow out of it. And he might have had I not allowed him to keep company with his older brother while I myself grieved, but…” Another rattling breath. “…it eased my burden to place the responsibility for Geoffrey elsewhere—for only a time, I vowed, and yet I never truly came back to him. Or you.” He swallowed loudly. “I know you remember the day I came upon Robert pinning you whilst he encouraged Geoffrey to bloody your face.”

Christian did remember, though it was only one of the many times his brothers had cornered and beaten him before his body had lengthened and broadened and thickened such that he was able to defend himself and give back much of what was given him.

“When they told me they but meant to teach you a lesson for running from your tutor that you might practice with your dagger as I had forbidden you to do, I did not punish them.”

Instead, he had yanked his bloodied and begrimed youngest son to his feet, marched him to the chapel, and made him prostrate himself before the altar through dusk until dawn. But for all the force-fed faith, it had only made Christian yearn more for a knight’s life.

“I am sorry,” Aldous said, “and yet I am not, for in giving you to the Church, my influence and Robert’s was deflected that you might become the man you are now, a worthy lord as I have not been for many years. As Geoffrey never was.”

The words Christian had longed to hear, but had never expected to be spoken—or even felt—nearly knocked him backward. And as he stared at his father, wondering if this shell of a man was, indeed, his sire, he felt the resentment he had tried so hard to keep buried uncoil and rise up and out of him.

“In spite of all I have denied you,” Aldous continued, “you are most worthy, my son.”

Worthy… But even as he wrapped his heart around the word, he wondered if, had he been reared the same as Geoffrey, weapons placed early and often in his hands and guided by a resentful, misbegotten brother, he might have turned the way Geoffrey had gone. Might Gaenor have had real reason to flee their marriage?

“And I am sorry for blaming you for Geoffrey’s death near as much as I blamed the Wulfriths—for my anger at your envy of all he had been given that you were not.” When Aldous next he spoke, his voice trembled. “Pray, forgive me?”

Christian gripped his hand. “Do you also forgive my trespasses, all will be well between us.”

Aldous jerked his chin.

“Then be troubled no more.”

His father sank deeper into his pillows and regarded Christian through half-hooded eyes. “What of your Wulfrith bride? Tell me I have not ruined your marriage.”

It was a far better place to venture than turning over and over a past that could not be changed. “’Tis a good marriage. I love Gaenor, and she loves me.”

“Love,” Aldous murmured. “I believe I knew it once—perhaps twice.”

Christian almost questioned that second instance, but Aldous surely referred to Robert’s mother.

“Is this Wulfrith woman sturdy enough to bear you many sons?”

Christian guessed he was thinking of the petite Beatrix whose trial he had been ejected from. Though it was not certain Gaenor was with child, he did not think there could be harm in telling his father she was when it seemed the tidings would be welcome and might ease his passing.

“Aye, my lovely wife is sturdy. In less than a nine-month, she will deliver our first child.”

A whimper sounded from Aldous. “A son,” he breathed, the corners of his misshapen mouth lifting. “I…” His eyes widened. “If you would allow it, I would meet the mother of my grandsons.”

Christian hesitated. Gaenor had accompanied him not only to stand by his side but, given the opportunity, to make her own peace with Aldous. Still, he would have preferred to keep her from this chamber lest his father’s bent mind did more harm than good.

“I beseech you,” Aldous rasped, “bring your Gaenor to me. Upon my word, I will do naught that you will regret.”

Grudgingly, Christian nodded.

When he opened the door, it was to the sight of Gaenor and Helene standing solemnly side by side against the opposite wall. He held out his hand to his wife.

She took it and he drew her inside, leaving the door open behind them.

Though Gaenor was not ignorant of the ravages suffered by Aldous in that long ago fire, Christian expected her to be unsettled by the sight of him when she halted beside the bed. If she was, she hid it well. Without falter, she looked upon Aldous Lavonne who would live in the children she birthed long after Christian’s sire turned to dust.

“You are she?” Aldous asked.

“I am Lady Gaenor of the Wulfriths, now of the Lavonnes, my lord.”

He slid his gaze down her, and when he returned to her face, it might have been wonder that shone from him. “You are most…sturdy, Christian’s wife.”

She did not appear to take offense. “That I am, my lord.”

A long moment passed, then Aldous rattled out a sigh. “You know that I have hated you and yours.”

Christian stiffened.

“I do,” Gaenor said. “Forsooth, neither have I liked you or yours.”

Aldous’s mouth twitched as if toward a smile.

“But now I love.” She glanced at Christian.

“You will give my son a son?” Aldous asked on a wheezing breath.

Gaenor laid a hand upon her abdomen. “Mayhap, my lord.”

“Or a daughter,” Christian said, “though it seems the Lavonnes and Wulfriths are more apt to bear sons.”

Aldous’s brow puckered further amid the scarred flesh. Then, with what seemed desperation, he rasped, “Come near, Christian.”

He leaned down. “Aye?”

“Nearer.”

He turned his ear to his father’s mouth, and the words breathed into it made him jerk, pull back, and glance to where the healer stood outside the door.

Aldous nodded. “All is told that must needs be told except…” His next breath was hard won. “…I have felt great affection for you, even when I did not know it.”

His words jolted, for they were not only unexpected, they were parting words that begged a reply. Momentarily putting aside Aldous’s cryptic words, he pressed his lips to his sire’s cheek. “I have felt great affection for you, Father.”

A long sigh broke the ragged seam of Aldous’s lips and, when Christian straightened, his father’s eyes were fixed and unseeing.

Christian looked to Gaenor.

Sorrow in her gaze, she said, “His pain is past,” and stepped nearer and slid her arms around her husband.

He drew her against him and breathed in the woman with whom he had been blessed. “Aye,” he spoke into her hair. “’Twas a good parting.”

Broehne Castle, England

April 1158

“’T
is a good beginning,” Annyn said as she gently swept the damp strands off Gaenor’s brow.

“A good beginning?” Beatrix protested from the opposite side of the bed where she cradled the infant who had not made his entrance into the world easy on his mother. But then, he was of good size. Indeed, Gaenor thought her son might weigh nearly twice what Annyn and Garr’s first child had weighed at birth. It was good he had not been born a girl.

Annyn smiled. “I have seen our Gaenor and her husband when they think no one watches, and there will surely be many more little Lavonnes crawling and running about the donjon, just as I believe you and Michael will be so blessed.”

Gaenor swept her gaze from her sister-in-law to Beatrix, but her sister’s brow remained untroubled. She and Michael also wished children, but both seemed at peace that, thus far, none were forthcoming.

“In God’s time,” Beatrix said and looked to Gaenor. “You would hold your son again?”

Though she ached to once more put him to her breast, she yearned for the man who had too long paced the corridor outside the solar, waiting to meet his son.

“Soon,” she said and considered the healer who had come to stand alongside Annyn following her after-birth ministrations that had included directing the beaming Josephine and the bell-tinkling Aimee in the removal of the birthing chair and all other evidence of the hard labor. “I am ready for my husband, Helene.”

The woman inclined her head, traversed the solar, and pulled open the door. “Your wife and son await you, my lord.”

Christian was inside the chamber before half her words were spoken. As he strode across the rushes with fewer strides than most men required, his gaze shifted between Gaenor and the infant in Beatrix’s arms, but it was Gaenor’s side he gained first, accommodated by Annyn who jumped aside.

Bending near, he laid a hand to his wife’s cheek. “You are well?”

“More well than I can say.” She turned her mouth into his palm and kissed it. “Now meet our son.”

He lowered his head, briefly touched his lips to hers, then straightened and rounded the bed.

As he peered into the cloths that bundled their child, he said with urgency, “May I hold him, Beatrix?”

She laughed. “You need not ask permission to hold your own son, my lord.”

“Indeed.” He reached, only to hesitate and splay his hands as if uncertain as to how to handle an infant.

Beatrix stepped close, settled the babe in his arms, and guided his hands to where they would best support the little one.

Christian stared. “He is so small.”

This time it was Annyn who laughed. “That is no small babe, Baron Lavonne, and no small task was it for your wife to deliver him unto you.”

Once again, Christian sought Gaenor’s gaze. “Truly, you are well?”

She smiled at the man who seemed younger than ever she had seen him. “Quite.”

“Two days, my lord,” Helene spoke up, “and your lady wife will be out of bed. Two days after that, she will be about the castle again.”

Christian turned to where the woman stood at the foot of the bed. “Thank you, Helene. Again, my family is in your debt.”

She averted her gaze, and an uneasy silence fell as often happened when the two exchanged words.

Inwardly, Gaenor sighed. It had been no great feat to unravel the meaning of the words Aldous Lavonne had whispered in his son’s ear so many months past.

“I have a daughter,” he had said and, for a moment, Christian had believed he meant Gaenor, but the old baron had added, “And you have a sister.” Not Gaenor, but she who had come to mean much to him, she who knew the reason that the life of Robert’s mother had been made more difficult, she who would tell it herself when she deemed the time was right, she of red hair of a much different shade from her departed brother’s. Helene.

But still the healer turned aside Christian’s questioning and made no attempt to claim kinship with the Lavonnes. Of course, considering what had happened between her and Abel when he had become her unwilling patient months and months past, the woman’s silence likely had more to do with Gaenor’s brother than Christian.

“I will leave you now,” Helene said, “though I shall pass the night in your hall should Lady Gaenor have need of me.”

Gaenor was glad to have her near and grateful she had brought John with her so she would not be pressed to soon return to her village. The boy had long ago recovered from the trauma of his mother’s abduction—indeed, even in the absence of Abel’s influence, he was more often pleasant than not. Of course, he did challenge any man he perceived as a threat to his mother with the wooden sword Abel had fashioned for him before the attack on Castle Soaring had so altered her brother—
Gaenor did not want to think on Abel’s struggle to regain what he had lost, not now when there was so much joy after so much pain.