She nodded, and then said, "I must dress your wound, my lord. My lady Agatha, would you hand me a camise? Dagda, I will need moss to pack the wound. You know the land. Can you find it nearby?"

"I gathered some earlier in antic.i.p.ation, my lady Mairin. I will fetch it."

The queen's mother did not argue with the younger woman. She found Mairin's behavior quite commendable. She was not yet in labor, and her husband needed her attention. She handed Mairin the requested garment, asking as she did so, "Will you need hot water, my dear?"

"Yes, my lady, and clean cloths for bandaging, and wine to clean the wound." Mairin struggled into her camise, and then rose gingerly from her bed. Her belly was quiet as if the child was resting in preparation for its labors to come.

Josselin put his arms about her for a long minute, and they stood together in sweet embrace. Gently he nuzzled her hair, and she gave a little murmur of happiness. "I was so afraid," she told him. "I could not see the field of battle from the queen's bower, but I could hear the shouts of the crowd. Then when it grew so still . . ."

"I had driven Eric Longsword to his knees, and it was then that I killed him," Josselin said quietly.

"But he wounded you."

"A lucky blow," Josselin said with a careless smile.

She stood back from him, and looked closely at the deep gash that was now crusted over with dried blood. "If he had been any luckier, you could have lost the use of that arm. There is a muscle there that, had Eric severed it, would have left you with a withered arm. Oh, Holy Mother! Look at those bruises!" Her hands ran anxiously over his torso, his other shoulder and arm.

Josselin winced several times, but his humor was well intact. "Lady," he teased, "stop, I pray you, before I forget you are about to bear a child this day."

The lady Agatha, reentering the room, heard this remark and chuckled. It brought back so many memories, for she and her late husband often teased each other thusly. It was the sign of a happy marriage. "Here is some of what you need to begin, my dear," she said to Mairin. "I will check the kettle on the hearth to see if the water is hot."

"Sit down upon the bed," Mairin commanded her spouse.

"I will a.s.sist you," said Dagda, who crowded into the small room bringing the requested moss with him.

Mairin nodded, and the queen's mother could tell immediately that they had worked in tandem before. She stood quietly to one side, knowing that if she was needed, Mairin would ask. Dagda handed a small basin to Josselin to hold. Mairin held her hands over the basin while Dagda poured wine over them. The big man whisked the first basin away to replace it with a second, this filled with boiling water. He handed his mistress a piece of clean cloth, and dipping the cloth in the boiling water, Mairin began to soak away the encrusted blood about the wound. She worked in silence for some minutes until finally the gash was clean. Dagda had three times replaced the hot water, which quickly became bloodied, with fresh water, and Mairin had used at least half a dozen cloths before she was satisfied. Although the heavy bleeding had ceased, the wound was fully open and oozing now. The water basin was replaced once again, and Dagda poured fresh, dark wine into the new receptacle. Handing Mairin a small clean sea sponge, he braced his lord's shoulder as she disinfected the wound with the strong wine. Josselin winced but slightly.

"I must cauterize the gash," Mairin told her husband. "If I do not, it could open again. You can't lose any more blood."

"Very well," he said. He had had wounds cauterized before. It was not a pleasant prospect.

Dagda had placed a dagger on the grate over the fire in the hearth. Now, its blade glowing red, he removed it and carefully handed it to his mistress. She never hesitated. Pressing the blade over his wound, she successfully closed it. For a moment the little bedchamber was filled with the stench of burning flesh. Josselin gave a loud groan, and he swayed where he sat for the briefest moment, his eyes closing with his pain.

Mairin was very pale, and from the peculiar look on her face, the queen's mother suspected that her labor had begun. She would say nothing, the lady Agatha suspected, until her husband's wound was fully tended. She watched as Mairin tenderly packed the cauterized gash with cool moss, and then fussily rebandaged it, standing back to examine her handiwork. Satisfied, the young woman poured her husband a small goblet of the strong wine and handed it to him, but not before the lady Agatha had seen her put in the liquid a small pinch of powder from a tiny pouch that Dagda offered her. "It's a painkiller," Mairin said by way of explanation. "There's juniper, wormwood, and tansy in it." Then an open spasm of pain crossed her face.

"My lord de Combourg," said the queen's mother, "I think I must ask you to arise and give the bed back to your wife. She has been so concerned with your condition that she seems to have forgotten her own."

"I am all right," Mairin protested weakly.

He gulped the medicined wine she had handed him in a single swallow, and then standing, helped her back to the bed. "You have done more than your duty, lady," he said quietly. "You are indeed your mother's daughter. Eada will be proud when I tell her of your conduct."

Mairin chuckled. "Aye, my lord, I am indeed my mother's daughter, and she taught me well my duties as a wife."

The lady Agatha could see this was some little joke between them, and so with Dagda, she busied herself cleaning up the evidence of Mairin's doctoring. Then with the big man's aid, she prepared the room for a birthing chamber. Although she had never had the help of a man in such a situation, Dagda did not seem out of place here. She could not help but be curious.

"Have you ever seen a child born?" she asked him.

"Aye, gracious lady, I have. I was present at my lady Mairin's birth, and that of her little daughter, the lady Maude."

How very curious, thought the lady Agatha, surprised to find his answer did not shock her. She nodded to no one in particular with approval as Dagda placed several plump pillows behind Mairin's back, elevating her to a half-seated position. He certainly seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and seeing her obvious curiosity, Mairin said, "We have some time before us, my lady Agatha, and so I will explain Dagda's position to you."

The queen's mother listened, fascinated, as Mairin unfolded the story of her background, and Dagda's. She saw no reason to disbelieve Mairin, and the younger woman obviously spoke the truth, for her husband did not deny her words. Still, it was a story worthy of the bardic tales she had heard sung in the Great Hall of many a castle during her long lifetime. She could readily believe that the huge Irishman had slain hundreds in his time, and yet brought to G.o.d by the gentle monks, Dagda had become the keeper of that most fragile of life forms, a female child. It was a beautiful story, and she found herself touched and brought close to tears several times during its telling.

Mairin had paused several times in her recitation to breathe with a pain. Her labor was light, and remained so for the next several hours. She had sent the men off at one point to eat the main meal of the day in the Great Hall. She knew there would be a celebration in her husband's honor, and she wanted him to be there. He would find it easier awaiting their son's birth among the men of the court, she knew.

"Stay with him," she ordered Dagda. "I will call you both when it is time."

They had gone off, and Mairin had dozed for a bit. The queen and Christina had come to see how she fared. They had spoken for some time, Margaret telling Mairin of the combat. Josselin had been the perfect knight, fighting with honor and skill. Eric Longsword had been vicious and dishonorable, spewing a constant and vituperative stream of foul lies about Mairin and himself in hopes of rattling his opponent. Josselin, however, had closed his ears to Eric's words, and slowly and steadily beaten the man back, leveling punishing blow after punishing blow upon the kidnapper of his wife until finally Eric had fallen to the ground and Josselin de Combourg, without a moment's hesitation, had plunged his sword through his enemy's hauberk, and straight into his heart.

"How was he wounded?" Mairin asked the queen.

"It was in the beginning," said Margaret. "At first Eric fought silently against your lord, but when he found he could not easily disarm and defeat him, he began to speak his foulness. His first words started Josselin, and for a moment, his guard was down. It was then Eric struck his blow, but immediately Josselin recovered, and never again did he allow his opponent the advantage.

"Mairin, I hope you will not misunderstand, but I have given orders for Eric Longsword to be buried in hallowed ground. He was an evil and arrogant man, but he was shriven before the combat, and I must therefore consider that his was a Christian soul, and eligible for honorable burial. My conscience would not allow me to do otherwise."

"Nay, Margaret, I hold no grudge against Eric Longsword. He was a tragic man, but he has paid for his crimes with his most precious possession, his life. Perhaps he will be happier in the next world than he was in this world. I shall pray for his poor soul."

The queen smiled, pleased. "I knew that your heart was a good and a forgiving one, Mairin. Remember, when you return home to your beloved Aelfleah, that you will always have a friend in Margaret of Scotland."

The queen departed with her sister, and Mairin dozed once more. When she awoke it was evening, and her labor began in earnest. For the next several hours she sweated and strained to bring forth the child from her pain-racked body. There was little the lady Agatha could do but offer Mairin encouragement, an occasional sip of wine, and wipe the beads of perspiration from her brow. Every now and then she would arise from her place at the laboring woman's head, and check the infant's progress. Finally, when she deemed the time right, she sent a serving maid for Josselin, who needed no encouragement to return to his wife's side. Dagda returned with him, and together the two men waited in the little antechamber to be called to Mairin's side. Finally, the lady Agatha stuck her head through the door between the rooms and said, "The child's head and shoulders are born, my lord. If you would see your child's first efforts at life, you must come now!"

The two men squeezed into the chamber, placing themselves one on either side of Mairin while the queen's mother bent from the bed's foot, and helped to ease the child from its mother's body. Not quite fully born, the baby howled loudly, and even Mairin, in her final labor, smiled at the sound. Then giving a push, she expelled the infant out into the world.

"It is a boy!" the lady Agatha cried, holding the screaming and bloodied baby up for them to see. Then she put the child upon his happy mother's belly. Mairin having quickly expelled the afterbirth, the older woman cut the cord that had bound mother and son, and swiftly cleaned her patient up while a smiling Dagda took the baby, and gently wiped the birthing blood from him with warm oil and a soft cloth.

Feeling useless, Josselin slipped from the room. He had barely looked at the baby, afraid of what he might see. Suddenly, all the old fears and doubts had returned to plague him. All the terrible and foul words that Eric Longsword had spat at him this afternoon before Josselin had finally killed him-words he had shut out of his conscious mind at the time for fear of losing his control and, ultimately, the battle with his enemy-now flooded back to torture him. He could almost hear Eric Longsword laughing at his plight from the fiery h.e.l.l to which he had surely been consigned. Mocking him with the knowledge that it was his son, and not Josselin's who would be called the de Combourg heir.

Weeks ago he had sworn to Mairin that he had believed her story that Eric Longsword had not raped her. That the child Mairin carried in her womb was his child. That he had no doubts, but G.o.d have mercy upon him, he did have doubts. Mairin was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Surely the most beautiful woman in the world, and no normal man having her in his possession, desiring her as Eric Longsword had desired her, could not have taken her fully and completely.

"My lord?" Dagda was at his elbow. "The lady Mairin would see you now."

Slowly he went back into their bedchamber, and there was his beloved enchantress propped up against the pillows smiling proudly and radiantly, the swaddled baby settled within the crook of her arm. Pushing the d.a.m.ning thoughts into the dark reaches of his brain, he smiled back at her, and for the first time, gazed seriously upon the infant. Large round blue eyes stared back at him to his complete amazement. In a strange way, the child reminded him of little Maude, but for the blond fuzz that topped his head. Maude's hair had been dark.

"Here is your son, my lord," Mairin said quietly. "Here is William de Combourg. I swear upon the True Cross that he is your child. Will you recognize him as such?"

He knew he must answer in the affirmative, and yet he hesitated, and in that moment, the king entered the room with Margaret. Gratefully, he turned to greet the visitors, but not before he had seen the disbelief and hurt spring into Mairin's eyes.

"Josselin, my friend," said Malcolm Ceann Mor, "I have to tell you something that has been discovered while preparing the body of Eric Longsword for his burial. My wife has never doubted Mairin's a.s.surances that her captor never forced himself upon her, and for my Meg's sake, I believed it also. Your wife did not lie, though I know there were those who did doubt her.

"When the body was stripped of its garments to be washed prior to preparing it for its burial, it was discovered that Eric Longsword had no genitals."

"What?" Josselin felt both relief and amazement pouring through him in equal amounts.

"The man had no genitals," the king repeated. "Once he did, but he was obviously injured severely in some battle of the past few years. He used a reed to aid him in peeing, but as for his c.o.c.k and b.a.l.l.s, they have been long gone. There are terrible scars, but nothing else remains to attest to his manhood. I thought you would want to know. Now let me see this fine son you have had a hand in producing."

Silently Mairin handed William to the king, and then she said, "I would consider it an honor if you and the queen would stand as G.o.dparents to my son. Will Father Turgot baptize William tonight?"

Margaret glanced at the new parents, and realizing that there was something very wrong, she quickly said, "Of course he will. Here, Malcolm, give me our G.o.dson. We will go immediately to the chapel, and see that young lord William is p.r.o.nounced a good Christian before the hour is out."

The room quickly emptied but for Mairin and Josselin. After a long silence broken only by the snapping of the dry apple wood in the fireplace, Mairin said quietly, "I will never forgive you, Josselin."

"You must," he said. "I cannot go on without you, enchantress. I tried to believe you! I wanted to believe you! I thought I did, but as I stood in the anteroom just a few minutes ago, all the terrible things that Eric Longsword said to me this afternoon came thundering back, and for the briefest moment, I admit to my doubt."

"You would have continued to doubt me and to doubt William had the king not brought us the information that he did."

"No!" He denied it, feeling greater shame now than he had felt before, for he knew what she said was true.

"I will never forgive you, Josselin," she repeated, and seeing the cold anger in her dark violet eyes, he found himself more afraid now than he had ever been in his entire life.

"You must forgive me, enchantress. I love you, and I recognize William as my trueborn son!"

"Too late," she hissed at him. "You are too late, my lord. William is my son, and mine alone! I will never let you have him!" Then she turned her back to him, and Josselin de Combourg knew that of all the battles he had faced in his life, the battle now facing him, the battle to win back his wife's love, would be the hardest battle all.

Chapter 17.

When William de Combourg was two weeks old, his parents began their journey home to Aelfleah. He had been a strong and healthy baby from birth, and he thrived further in the bright autumn air of his travels. He made his journey resting comfortably in a heavy cloth sling which enabled him to ride cuddled against his mother's warm b.r.e.a.s.t.s. When he was hungry, Mairin merely drew a breast through one of two slits she had made in her tunic top, and popped a nipple into William's eager little mouth. The infant's appet.i.te was quite prodigious, and the motion of Mairin's horse seemed to have no ill effects upon him.

Mairin was overly protective of her son, clutching him to her bosom possessively whenever Josselin came near. Although she did not create any overt scandal, her att.i.tude was enough to unnerve Josselin. He dared not remonstrate with her publicly, for before others she appeared to be the sweetest-natured woman and an obedient wife. She did not speak to him, however, unless he spoke to her first. Her demeanor was a modest and quiet one.

Dagda, watching her, knew better. The dark side of her Celtic nature was a.s.serting itself strongly, and he knew that she plotted revenge against Josselin de Combourg who she felt had wounded her so deeply. In Mairin's entire adult life, Dagda had never seen her so coldly angry at anyone as she now was at her husband, and Dagda thought that his mistress was wrong. It was not fair, he thought, for her to have expected Josselin to disbelieve Eric Longsword's story. Mairin seemed to forget that, had her captor been fully endowed with all his parts, she would have indeed been raped, and the paternity of her son, quite definitely, in doubt. Dagda thought that the mere fact that Josselin had tried so hard to accept his wife's word should have exonerated his momentary lapse of blind faith.

He was probably the only person who might challenge her att.i.tude, and Dagda did. "You are treating the man shamefully," he scolded Mairin several days after little William's birth.

"Has he not treated me shamefully?" she argued back.

"Nay," said Dagda bluntly, "he has not. He publicly accepted your word when others would not. He has been a loving and a kind husband to you. Sometimes I think he is better than you deserve."

"He would not have acknowledged my son as his heir had not the condition of Eric Longsword's manhood been brought to light. He doubted William's paternity, and for that, I will never forgive him. A woman knows the father of her own child! Especially when she has never known any man but him." Mairin glowered at the Irishman.

"Agreed!" replied Dagda. "But you cannot be certain he would have denied William, my lady Mairin. He but hesitated a moment. Perhaps it was to clear his throat. Perhaps not. Josselin de Combourg is but flesh and blood. He is no saint. Whatever private devils he may have had troubling him, he kept them to himself. You were not there upon the field of honor. You did not hear the words with which Eric Longsword taunted him. I did! That he did not go mad is a miracle, and a testament of his love for you. Why will you not forgive him?"

"Do you know the kind of life he would have condemned my son to by not acknowledging him? He would have made William a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and not even a b.a.s.t.a.r.d like himself. At least Raoul de Rohan admitted to his paternity where Josselin was concerned. Josselin would have denied William on suspicion alone, condemning him to the life of a fatherless b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and shaming me in the process, for mine is a tale that could hardly be repeated over and over again each time an explanation was due. Josselin would have denied his eldest son his rightful place and his inheritance. I will not forgive him for it!"

"Then you are either a fool, or your wits have been disarranged by this experience," snapped Dagda. "Maire Tir Connell would have never behaved in such a fashion."

"Spare me the stories of my sainted mother," Mairin snapped back, sending him a withering look. "She died in her fifteenth year. I am practically twenty."

They took their leave of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret, and the many friends they had made at the Scots court.

"I am verra sorry to see ye go," Angus Leslie said. "I hope the next time we meet, 'twill not be in some d.a.m.ned battle."

"Let us make a pact then." Josselin grinned. "You stay away from the English border, and I'll stay away from the Scots."

The laird of Glenkirk chuckled. "I think yer right, Joss. 'Tis time I, like ye, took my wife and went home where the politics of our two countries canna reach us."

The two men gripped each other's hands in a grasp of friendship, and then parted. The king and the queen presented Mairin with a silver goblet for their G.o.dson. It was beautifully wrought, and had the de Combourg seal upon it done in silver, azure enamel, and gold. The new mother thanked them, knowing that this was the first heirloom to be received by the now English branch of the de Combourg family of which her son was the firstborn.

The queen embraced Mairin, and said softly, "Do not answer me now, for you would but answer me in haste, Mairin, but you must eventually purge your heart of this anger you now feel toward your lord husband. Forgive him, my friend. You will not be happy until you do."

Forcing a smile, Mairin thanked the queen for all her kindness, pointedly ignoring that good lady's plea, and feeling guilty at the saddened look she saw in Margaret's eyes as they met hers in final farewell. I am right, Mairin thought stubbornly. I am right!

Mairin's heart raced joyfully at her first sight of Aelfleah. They had traveled slowly and carefully for both her sake and the baby's. Now as she looked down upon her home for the first time in ten months, it was early October and from the vantage of the hillside upon which her horse stood, she could see the beeches, the oaks, and the birches splashing their russet, scarlet, and golden tones amid the deep green of the pines within The Forest. Then her eye was irresistibly drawn to something upon the heights of the western hills, and Mairin gasped.

"Aldford," she said, amazed. " 'Tis finished!"

"Not yet," Josselin answered his wife. "There is still a great deal of interior work to do, but it can be done during the autumn and the winter months. The castle is defensible now, however. When it is finished, the king has said he will come, and our old friend Eadric the Wild has agreed to pledge his fealty to William then. In the meantime, he has promised me he will keep the peace."

"I imagine he would keep the peace now. The lesson of Northumbria cannot have been lost on him."

"Would you like to inspect Aldford tomorrow?" he asked her.

"If it would please you, my lord, that I do so," came the deceptively meek reply.

"I would think you would want to since it is soon to be your home, and you its chatelaine. The family apartments are quite s.p.a.cious, and I have arranged for fireplaces in all the major rooms."

"I will never leave Aelfleah to live in your castle," she said sweetly. "You built Aldford to keep the king's peace. Although I have not been happy to have your beacon of a castle drawing strangers to this manor, as a good servant of the king, I allowed it. I did not, however, promise you that I should live there."

"I am Baron Aldford," Josselin said through gritted teeth, "and William is my heir. Aldford will one day be his, and he should live there until he is fostered out."

"You will never take my son from me," she said in a low voice, "and as I do not intend living at Aldford, neither will William live there, my lord."

"He is my son too, Mairin."

"Are you certain of that, my lord?" she replied mockingly. "You were not so sure upon the day he was born. You would have denied him despite my a.s.surances. It took the sight of poor Eric Longsword's mutilated body to convince you of William's paternity! In the moment that you doubted me, you gave up all claim to William, my lord!"

"We cannot go on like this, Mairin," he protested to her.

"Like what, my lord? I will be a good and faithful wife to you, as I have always been. I will tend your house, and bear your children, but you shall not have William." Then before he might argue further with her, she pointed with her finger as they were descending the heights and said, "Look! There is mother, and she has Maude with her! My G.o.d! Our daughter is walking! I left her an infant in arms and she is walking now! Oh, d.a.m.n Eric Longsword! How much else have I missed?"

Eada wept with happiness to have her daughter back safely once again, and she was ecstatic at her first sight of baby William. "Look, Maude," she said to her granddaughter, holding the baby at the little girl's level, "here is your baby brother. His name is William."

Maude cast a jaundiced eye over the swaddled bundle. "Wi!" she said. "No! No!"

Mairin laughed, and dismounting, swept her daughter up into her embrace. "You must not be jealous of William, my poppet," she said, nuzzling kisses on Maude's soft little neck. "Mama loves you as much as she always has."

Maude turned her head and looked into Mairin's face. "Mama?" she said.

Mairin's eyes filled with tears that threatened to spill over down her cheeks. "Yes, Maude," she told her daughter. "I am your mama, and I will never leave you again."

Maude gave her mother a sunny smile, and then she said, "Down!"

"She wants you to put her down," said Josselin. "She walked at thirteen months and hasn't stopped since."