‘Yes,’ he said gently.
‘But-’ I did not know how to deal with it. He was going, he was leaving me, with no promise of a return. I did not need to ask why. He had come on a mission, and the man who had sent him wanted to know the outcome. Rollo had no choice. I realized that I did not know what that outcome was. I thought back to the moment when Lord Edmund had slumped to the ground.
‘Is he dead?’ I said, my words barely audible.
‘Yes.’
Of course he was. Rollo was a professional. He would not have left his enemy alive to threaten the king again.
I stared at the man I loved and who I was about to lose. I held my head high and swallowed the sob that rose in my throat. I looked straight into his eyes, and he looked back into mine. I saw then that he loved me too.
Then he turned and, falling quickly into an efficient, ground-covering lope, set off across the grass. Soon he was out of sight.
I went about the many tasks I had to achieve in the next few days with quiet efficiency. It was good to have things to do.
Gewis and I made our way back to Aelf Fen. The crossing of the fens had landed us some eight miles north-west of the village, and as soon as I had worked out where we were it was relatively easy to trudge on home. We were welcomed with anxious solicitude by my family, and it was good to be in dry clothes that were not caked with black mud. Gewis ate as if he was half-starving. I had no appetite.
Gewis did not seem to know what to do. He was still afraid that the Wessex faction would come for him and force him into the role they had planned for him, and even when I revealed to him that Lord Edmund was dead he was not reassured.
‘Give him time,’ my father said wisely. I had told him the whole story, although I had mentioned Rollo only briefly. ‘He’s suffered several shocks in a short time, and he’s lost his mother. He can stay with us for a while — our own village carpenter can find jobs for him — and, when he’s ready, he can think about his future.’
So that was Gewis dealt with.
I was about to return to Ely to find Edild and Hrype when they turned up in Aelf Fen. Edild had hired a boatman, who had brought them almost all the way, and a farmer had carried Hrype the last few miles on his cart. Now Hrype was safely at home with Froya tending him.
I did not like to dwell on how Edild felt about that. Her feelings for Hrype were her secret, hers and his. If they could manage to conceal their true feelings and smile about it, I had no business interfering.
Sibert came home.
I don’t know what he and Hrype said to each other. Again, that is between them. I am almost certain that they did not tell Froya that Sibert now knew the truth about his parents. Knowing her as I do — and I admit I don’t know her all that well — I don’t think she is the sort of woman who could receive a blow like that and not show it in her demeanour. She’s a nervy type and life’s knocks hit her a lot harder than they do most people.
If Sibert saw that too and, out of love for her, came to terms with his anger so that she never knew he had discovered her secret then it is greatly to his credit.
Maybe he would tell me, one day.
I returned to my aunt’s house and went back to my studies. She had stitched the cut on my left cheek and done a very neat job. I will have a scar, but it’s quite an attractive one, like a crescent moon. As it matures, it will even be the right pale colour. Edild says the priestesses of the old religion had crescent moons tattooed on their brows, so I am in good company.
She knows there is something wrong. She is the only one who does, although I have to keep my distance from Granny just now because she’ll pick it up, too, if I let her. Edild only realized because once I was inattentive during a lesson, and she reprimanded me; I dissolved into tears.
With her warm arms round me and her mouth pressed to the top of my head, she murmured words of comfort. I know she read my mind, for she spoke of private things that I have not told a soul. But I didn’t mind. In fact, I discovered that having her share my secret was a comfort. Bless her, she didn’t offer platitudes and tell me I’d soon forget him and there were plenty of other young men in the world. She knew he was special, and in a way she mourned him with me. She certainly understood my pain.
One day I plucked up courage and asked her about what was on my mind. ‘Edild, you remember my web of destiny?’ She had cast my birth chart several years ago.
She looked up from her work. ‘Of course.’ The expression in her eyes suggested she already knew what I was going to ask.
‘You said I’d never be close to my lovers,’ I said, blushing, ‘and we’re not lovers, I mean we weren’t lovers, but I just wondered, I mean, I-’
Edild took pity on me. She reached out and took my hand. Hers was cool. ‘I said your lovers would not feel that they were truly close to you,’ she corrected, ‘but I said that applied to your friends and family too.’
‘But-’ I began.
She squeezed my hand to silence me. ‘I did not mean that you would have no lovers, Lassair, any more than that you would have no family and friends, for of the latter you have more than enough.’ She smiled, and I smiled with her. ‘No. What I saw in your chart — what, indeed, I see constantly in you — is that you have a core that is private to yourself. Nobody breaches it, for it is yours alone.’
‘I don’t want-’
Again, she stopped me. ‘It is a good thing, Lassair,’ she insisted. ‘You are loving and open-hearted, and if you did not have this hidden core then there would be a danger of your giving all of yourself and that would not be wise. The way you are, you will love and be loved, yet always keep a little something back that is just for you.’
I thought about that. I wasn’t sure it sounded very appealing. ‘It’s going to take a special sort of man to put up with me,’ I muttered, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever find anyone prepared to risk taking me on.’
Edild had gone back to her pestle and mortar. She smiled serenely. ‘You will,’ she murmured. She added something else, but I didn’t catch it. I can’t have done, for what I thought she said was, You already have.
But he had gone, and that just couldn’t be right.
Could it?