A Moment in Time (52 page)

"Caddaric, my husband, in the name of God, I beg you to swear," Eadgyth Crookback pleaded.

"My lord! My lord!" His four lesser women were clustering about him, clutching at his sleeves with irritating fingers. He shook them off.

"Swear!"
Eadwine Aethelhard's voice had sunk to a whisper, but still they all heard the word plainly said.

Caddaric Aethelmaere's cold eyes met those of Wynne's even as the death rattle sounded in Eadwine Aethelhard's throat.

Eadgyth and the others fell to their knees and began praying as the thegn's grip loosened on his son's arm and fell away. The coals in the fire pits crackled eerily. Old Ealdraed shuffled slowly across the hall, opening the door to the morning. A broad ray of sun splashed across the floor as the portal swung wide. Beyond, the clear song of the lark was heard, and then, his gaze never leaving Wynne's, the new thegn of Aelfdene manor said in a hard, harsh voice,
"Now, Welsh woman, you are mine!"

Chapter 17

Despite the bright December sunlight, the day was somber. Wynne moved away from Eadwine's body and over to Eadgyth.

"What are your customs for burying the dead?" she asked the kneeling woman. It was the day of the Winter Solstice, she thought. As good a day as any to die. Silent tears rolled down her beautiful face.

Drained, Eadgyth pulled herself to her feet. "In the old days," she began, "the custom amongst our people was cremation, although those to the south of us interred their dead in the earth with as many grave goods as the deceased was worthy of and could afford. Since the coming of the priests, we merely bury our dead. The cemetery is next to the little church."

"Will you help me prepare the body?" Wynne inquired. She was feeling tired, and she was shocked by Caddaric's words to her across poor Eadwine's fallen body. Her breasts ached terribly, and looking down, she could see the front of her tunic dress was stained with not only Eadwine's blood, but her milk as well.

"Of course I will help," Eadgyth said quickly, seeing Wynne's predicament, and she put a comforting arm about Wynne, "but first you should feed Averel."

"Do not begin without me," Wynne said grimly. "I owe Eadwine every consideration due a good lord by his wife." She moved away from Eadgyth's embrace and took her sleeping daughter from her nurse's lap. Wearily she climbed the stairs to the Great Chamber, where she changed Averel's napkin and then sat down, almost totally spent, to nurse her daughter. She cradled the baby protectively as the child suckled her vigorously. Slow, hot tears slid unchecked down Wynne's face as she considered her dangerous position at Aelfdene now.

Caddaric had made his position very clear, but she simply could not accept such a thing. Wynne knew she was in a far more difficult position than when she had first come to Aelfdene. Then she was simply carrying a child. Now she had two children born and dependent upon her for their very lives. If she fled, she could not possibly succeed with two children in tow. She therefore had no choice. She must remain at Aelfdene, but how she could remain and be safe from Caddaric's lust was another matter. She needed rest and time to think. Instinctively she knew that Eadgyth would help her.

She felt his eyes on her and looked up to see that Caddaric had entered the Great Chamber. How long he had been there she was not certain. He lounged arrogantly against the lintel of the door, and she longed to kill him where he stood. "What do you want?" she demanded in an icy voice that did nothing to hide her loathing and distaste for him. "It will distress your sister if you disturb her meal. Have you sent a messenger to your brother's hall yet?"

"If you are thinking of leaving Aelfdene," he said in a blustering tone, ignoring her question, "do not. It would displease me to have to brand you for a runaway slave."

"I am no slave, and you know it well," Wynne returned in angry but even tones. "I am your father's widow and the mother of his daughter. I would hardly be so flighty as to remove Averel from her home and the security of her brother's care. Remember that you promised your father on his deathbed to care for your sister and her half brother. I will never leave my children, Caddaric. Therefore, I will be here to be certain that you keep that promise to your father."

"You are not afraid of me, are you?" he said, coming next to her. He reached out and touched her head with his hand.

"Nay," Wynne said quietly. "I do not fear you, Caddaric. I despise you, for despite your name, you are a coward and a bully in my sight. If you should attempt to accost me in any manner, I will make every effort to kill you. I can be no plainer than that."

He laughed harshly, and his fingers gripped her braid tightly, forcing her face up, that he might look into her green eyes. "Despite our disagreements, Welsh woman, I admired my father, and I owe him a debt that I can never repay him, for he gave his life for mine. You may have a month in which to mourn my father properly, but then you will come to my bed. What sons you will give me, Welsh woman! I have waited all my life for a woman of fire and ice such as you. I care nothing that you will not love me, and I want nothing of you but children. Give them to me and I will treat you as a queen might be treated."

"And if I do not give you the children you so desperately desire, Caddaric Aethelmaere? What then?" Wynne demanded fiercely, and she raised her now sated daughter to her shoulder to burp her.

"You will, Welsh woman," he growled at her.
"You will,"
and then he leaned down and ground his mouth on hers.

Startled, Wynne still had the presence of mind to bite down sharply on the lips that assaulted hers, and when, with a roar of outrage, he pulled away from her, she spat full in his face. "That is all you will ever get of me, Caddaric Aethelmaere," she said, rising to her feet. "Anger and scorn! Nothing more. Keep well clear of me,
my
lord!"

For a moment he looked as if he would attack her where she stood, so filled with violence was his ruddy face. Then the rage gripping him drained suddenly away and the new thegn of Aelfdene burst out laughing. "By God, Wynne," he said, using her name for the first time, "what a woman you are! What a woman!" Then turning about, he departed the Great Chamber, leaving her shaken and, if it was possible, even more tired and drained.

She sat back down again for a few minutes, cradling Averel, who, warm and dry and well-fed, was nodding sleepily. Looking into her daughter's little face, Wynne felt the tears beginning to come upon her once more. How like Eadwine the baby looked. How like Madoc Arvel looked. Was she to be haunted for the rest of her days by the bittersweet memories of these two wonderful men? What was to become of them? Averel's head lay heavily on her arm now, and so Wynne rose to tuck the little one into her cradle once more, and departing the Great Chamber, returned to the hall where the others waited.

"Willa," she said, addressing her daughter's nursemaid, "go up and sit by your little mistress." Then turning to the women, she said, "Let us prepare my lord Eadwine for his burial."

Eadwine Aethelhard's body was stripped of its clothing and tenderly bathed. The wound that had killed him had ceased draining and was now merely puckered and discolored. Ealdraed climbed the stairs to the Great Chamber and returned bearing the dead man's finest clothing. First they put red-orange braccos, cross-gartered in yellow, upon his feet and legs, to be followed by pointed, soft leather shoes. A sherte of natural-colored linen was topped by an under tunic of yellow and a full-skirted kirtle of indigo-blue and gold brocade which was belted in gilded leather. His ash-brown hair was brushed thoroughly. It turned itself up naturally, curling under just below his ears.

Wynne gently brushed Eadwine's fine beard, noting here and there silver hairs she had not noticed before. Her tears flowed once more. Sighing heavily, she placed Eadwine's favorite gold chain about his neck even as the wooden coffin was being carried into the hall. "Where are his weapons?" she asked of no one in particular.

"I have them," Caddaric answered.

The body was laid in the coffin, and Wynne rearranged the garments so that they were straight. The thegn's sword was buckled to his belt, his bow and his arrow case placed on either side of him. Eadwine's arms were then crossed over his chest, his shield lain over them so that it appeared he was grasping it. Wynne stepped back and looked down at Eadwine. He looked quite well, she thought sadly.

The coffin was carried to Aelfdene's little church and left before the altar, that the manor's serfs might pay their respects to their fallen master. The widow repaired to her chamber to wash and dress herself in clean clothing, as her garments were all bloodstained. Then Wynne returned to the church to keep a vigil before Eadwine's coffin until its burial later that afternoon. The candles flickered brightly in the little stone church as she knelt numbly by the coffin's side, barely aware of the weeping serfs and geburas who shuffled by in solemn procession.

"He must be in the ground before sunset," Caddaric said. "I'll not have him haunting Aelfdene."

"Eadwine may be dead, and you may bury him this day," Wynne said sharply, "but he still knows what is in your heart, Caddaric. It was the last thing he saw in your eyes before he died. Not sorrow or filial piety, but his son's unbridled lust for his wife. May your own death one day be even crueler."

All through the daylight hours of the December day the people of Aelfdene passed before Eadwine Aethelhard's coffin, viewing their lord a final time. When at last they had all gone, Gytha brought Arvel. Wynne arose from her kneeling position and, taking her son in her arms, showed him the dead man in his coffin.

"Da dead," Arvel said. "Gytha say." A tear rolled down his fat little cheek.

"Aye, my son. Da is dead and gone to heaven to be with our lord Jesus," Wynne replied. "We must pray for him." Then a tear slid down her cheek as well.

Arvel looked at his mother with Madoc's serious look, his face a miniature of his father's, and pronounced solemnly, "Ric is bad man. I no like! Want Da back, Mama!"

"Da cannot come back, Arvel," she patiently tried to explain, "and you must not anger the lord Caddaric in any way, my son. Da would not like it. Do you understand Mama?"

The little boy nodded his head, but Wynne could see that he did not easily comprehend the situation in which they now found themselves. Why should he? He was not quite three. She turned to Gytha.

"From this moment on, Gytha, you must keep an extra watch on Arvel. Do you understand me?" Wynne asked the girl.

"Aye, lady," Gytha replied. "I'll keep the wee laddie out of the new lord's way, never fear. We'll give him no excuse to claim displeasure of us."

They buried Eadwine Aethelhard before the early sunset came, lowering his plain wooden coffin into its grave, which had been dug next to the grave of his first wife, the lady Mildraed. Wynne had closed the coffin herself, bending over it first to give him a final kiss. His lips were cold and stiff now, totally unlike the warm and loving man she had known. Her quiet tears began to flow once again as she followed the coffin to its final resting place, watching as the rich dark dirt was shoveled over it.

"In olden times wives were sometimes buried alive with their husbands," Caddaric Aethelmaere remarked, to the horror of the others.

Wrapped in her grief, Wynne did not answer him; and when they had filled in the grave, she remained.

"Let her be!" Eadgyth hissed at her husband, whom she saw wanted to force the widow back to the hall.

"She will catch her death of cold," he protested. "I cannot have her doing herself a harm. You know I need her!"

"Wynne will do herself no hurt as long as she has Arvel and Averel to care for and love," Eadgyth told him wisely.

When Wynne finally did return to the hall, she was pale and obviously chilled. She did not stop by the fire pits to warm herself, but rather went directly to the Great Chamber, calling a house serf to follow after her. Several minutes later she reappeared, the servant in her wake, struggling with a heavy wooden chest.

"What are you doing?" Caddaric demanded.

"I am removing myself from the Great Chamber," Wynne told him. "It is now yours and Eadgyth's by right."

"You are to remain," he said.

"I will not,"
she told him obdurately, and turning to the servant, said, "Take my things to the pharmacea."

The servant stumbled off beneath the weight of the chest.

"You are to sleep in the Great Chamber," he repeated. "There is no room in the pharmacea for you, my sister, and her nursemaid."

"With your permission, my lord, your sister and Willa can remain in the Great Chamber. I, however, will not. I will sleep on a pallet in my pharmacea. I am the manor's healer, and it is my right to be there." She then turned, and walking across the hall, entered into the little chamber.

"She has not eaten all day nor last night either," Eadgyth fretted. "I will have Ealdraed take her a plate of food."

"If she would eat," he said coldly, "then let her come to the high board with the rest of us. She is my father's widow and has a place amongst us."

"Caddaric, I beg you," Eadgyth said gently, a pleading hand upon his arm, "let me coddle her this night only. Her grief is greater than you can imagine."

"Then you take the food to her," he said. "You must keep a strict eye upon her for me, Eadgyth, and see she remains in good health, for she will give me sons before the new year is out."

Eadgyth sadly shook her head at his words. Wynne was not like any woman that they had ever known. Neither she nor her husband's other women would have ever considered refusing Caddaric anything that he desired; but Wynne would. Eadgyth knew that the beautiful Welsh woman was probably correct in her assessment of Caddaric's sad condition. There would be no children, and when Caddaric tired of forcing himself on Wynne, what then? What would happen to her, for Eadgyth knew that being faced daily with this particular failure would be more than her husband could stand.