Chapter 5
They were going through the motions, he and Kari. They had come together when he rescued Valentine and later, played as a happy trinity with the lumpy camel he fashioned from a fallen ash branch. The rest of the day passed in a summer of mutual courtesy and yet, in spite of their courtly manners, that night Constantine woke in an icy sweat, his eyes burning with images of a nightmare, a massive river surging between himself and his family. No matter how hard he swam, he came no closer to the distant shore and his waving wife and son, waiting on the far bank.
They were waiting and waving at least, he told himself, longing to bury his sore nose in Kari’s luxuriant nut-brown hair. She and Val slept on the other side of the fire, as far apart from him as in the dream.
Go over, urged the voice in his head that sounded like Hadrian. Not yet. Kari has not given her answer concerning Yule.
“Why the frown, husband?”
He raised himself to his elbow and smiled at Kari through the glow of the burning branches. “Your eyes always were good, far-seeing. I was thinking of my parents and their celebration of Advent.” Wisely, he thought, he did not mention Yule or Christmas yet.
“That makes you scowl?” She cradled Valentine closer and the child nuzzled her in his sleep, two sights that no longer made Constantine jealous, merely saddened for having missed so much.
“I miss them,” he said, meaning more than his parents.
“We could visit, in better weather.” Kari bit her lower lip, as if cutting off a hasty remark. In the darkness and the fire, she was gold and orange, the light burnishing her lissome shape. Pregnancy had flattered her curves, and nursing, swollen her breasts. Constantine prayed she could not see his arousal.
“That would be good,” he said finally.
“Christmas and Yule were strange while you were away,” she confessed. “I sent out gifts of wood, bread and bacon to my people and gave loaves and beer and beef pottage to those who came to your manor. I had arranged to do something similar this year, with those servants I knew were reliable.”
There was a shadow in her voice that he wanted to pursue, and her comment “…those servants I knew were reliable” made him curious, but his reborn and developing husband-sense warned him to leave the matter for the moment. “Generous,” he said at length, ashamed he had not yet considered such Christmas customs. And of course, Kari has done so, even as she fled from our manor.
“Will you have the Yule Goat this year?”
Her question made him start, as much as a sudden spitting log had done. He shook his head. “I had forgotten that custom of your homeland. The person chosen to be the goat needs to be strong, I think you said.”
“Yes, indeed, strong to wear all the furs and carry the two poles that make the head, body and tail of the Yule goat, not forgetting his bells,” Kari replied promptly, adding, with a certain shyness, “You, for instance.”
Constantine basked in her sly flattery and in her blush, too. As for the Yule Goat, they had spoken of it once, before he and Kari were wed, but nothing had come of it before he left for Outremer.
Constantine sighed inwardly, only now realizing how the phrase left for Outremer marked the change in their marriage. “Perhaps it will be good to add the beast to the celebrations,” he said judiciously, wanting to please Kari. He spotted her tiny quirk of a smile and felt heartened. Much better than any “left for Outremer” with a king who has no interest in England beyond taxes and a brother with no understanding or sympathy for women.
Keen to stop his wretched memories, he smiled as the small round shadow beside Kari lengthened and flaxen curls blazed in the fire-light. Valentine tottered upright, clinging to his mother while he rubbed sleep from his eyes.
“Da!”
With no more warning, Valentine was off, galloping in a wide circuit about the fire—thank Christ he came around the fire!—to hug Constantine’s knees.
“Up!” The little boy raised both arms.
“Bed-time, Val,” warned his mother, but Valentine pouted, lowered his arms and joggled his father with a foot. A dainty foot, clad in scarlet. Bed-socks, so he will not be cold. And he has learned already to respect fire. My Kari is a good mother.
Far better than I have been a father—
Imperious as a king, Valentine raised his arms a second time. “Up!” he demanded. “Dan-c, dan…”
Across the fire, a golden shadow shifted. A faint crackle of twigs revealed Kari stalking closer.
“He wants you to dance.”
“Dance!” shouted Valentine, louder than a howling wolf. His bottom lip wobbled and his blue eyes teared, and Constantine was lost. He rolled crabwise, so he would not crush the demanding little imp, scooted to his feet and jiggled his boy into his arms.
Instantly, Valentine was all smiles, bumping his head against Constantine’s shoulder, his tiny warm body relaxed and trusting. Constantine swayed around the fire with him, what felt to be a doubtless besotted grin erupting on his face as Valentine popped a thumb into his rose-bud mouth and snuggled even closer.
A wave of feeling, strong and protective, swept through Constantine with crashing force. Here is my son, my beautiful boy. Exultant, he tried a second slow carol-dance, floating light as an angel, lighter still when he felt a slim hand clasp his other shoulder—Kari, following him, mirroring his steps.
“We danced many nights, Val and I,” he heard her warm voice admit. “Those times we were alone, and out in the gardens and meadows where none could spy.” When you were away from us, she did not add, for which mercy he was grateful.
“Good to dance again,” he said quickly, breath clutching in his chest as he prayed he spoke aright, making his answer gruff. Spy. She said spy. She has spoken of spies before today. Kari has been besieged while I was abroad, and I never understood. Blind, blind!
To his relief, Valentine chuckled and Kari laughed and they carried on dancing, round and round the fire, a first carol for Yule. There is progress and hope for us, thank God.
• ♥ •
“May I see my son’s caul?”
Kari did not pause in her breast-feeding of Valentine. With a free hand, she lifted a small pouch he had never noticed before from the waist folds of her grey-green dress and deftly untied its drawstring. Placing the pouch on the thigh that was not rocking her baby, she nodded.
“Careful when you touch. ’Tis delicate.”
Do not harm it, Constantine understood. Fingers trembling as they never did when he handled his sword, he leaned closer, catching his wife’s sweet pine and juniper scent. Slowly, he found the caul, or veil, within the pouch and eased it forth.
Shivering, it lay on his palm, a tiny, wrinkled, brown-pink oval. This once hid my child’s face. He felt himself begin to sweat. “So small,” he murmured.
“Here in my lands, those born thus are welcomed as lucky.”
Shame chilled the sweat on his back. He knew she remembered their bitter argument in the stable at his manor, when he had taken his brother’s prejudice and used it as a weapon—against my own flesh, that of my son and the one flesh by marriage of my wife.
The thought now turned his stomach. “Keep it—” he begged, sliding it back on top of the pouch, understanding why Kari wrapped it in silk. “—safe.”
“Always,” replied his wife.
He blinked against the clouding in his eyes and when he looked again the caul, or veil, was gone and the pouch tucked away in Kari’s skirts. “Thank you,” he said.
She smiled, rubbing Valentine’s narrow back to burp him. “Woodland pottage for breakfast?”
He nodded, knowing, from having seen her do this dish before, that she had an earthen pot she would place in the fire ashes, filled with spring water and grains and other foraged things, and when the sun was up, the pottage would be ready, and delicious.
She knows her lands and through her, our son is learning. The thought made him proud and humble together. That sting of humility caused him to remember one of her earlier answers, and he spoke.
“Were you and Val often alone, Kari?”
Even by the low light he knew her face had clouded. “It suited me,” she said, which was half a reply, half a defiance. He clenched his fists but there was no one to fight here, only the past and poor retainers and he would ensure better service—or they will answer to me.
His mind flashed back to his son’s caul or veil. How had that been saved? At once, and terribly, he knew. “You were alone in child-birth.”
Kari popped Valentine onto her other shoulder and continued to rub his back. “It was May-time, old Beltane in my lands. My people were off to new pasture with the cows and sheep.”
“And mine?” Constantine asked softly.
“It was May-time,” she repeated. “Folks were walking out, couples together, and there were revels.”
“Kari—”
“I had a swift confinement,” she went on, with a kind of giddy brightness. “Less time than a mass. No other saw or greeted my sweet son into this life but me. I had cleaned us both, and spirited away his caul before maid or page returned to the chamber.”
Kari had been alone for her first child. So much could have gone wrong. “You might have bled to death!”
“But I did not,” came the cool response. “And this way, Valentine was kept safe from those who would have used his caul to make accusations.”
The rising anger in Constantine turned at once to the sickly ashes of horror. So long, alone, has Kari strived. I should have been with her, with our child. Above the pounding heartbeat in his ears, he heard his wife’s steady recounting of her tale.
“Of course, Val’s difference could not be kept hidden forever, not from prying maids and brothers who urged those maids to search. I had kept it in our chest, but when I discovered a maid poking amidst our things and her pop-eyed look, I knew she had seen Valentine’s caul. I turned her from the chamber and took the caul, to hide on me and to keep safe.”
“My brother was busier than I realized,” Constantine said, through numb lips. Hadrian had done all this, created an investigation against Kari and used others to plot against her. And he calls himself a warrior for Christ! “I am glad he has gone.”
If I see Hadrian again on this earth it will be too soon.
As if she sensed his thoughts, Kari smiled and held out a hand. “Let me set our breakfast in the fire-ash and then we can go to greet the dawn,” she coaxed. “I know a place where the rising sun shows most beautifully against the birch trees.”
Her generosity staggered him. Silently, he fell into step behind her a few moments later, an echo of their earlier midnight dance. With a good breakfast to follow. The everyday wonder of it had him whistling a song, which Kari took up and chanted the refrain, with Valentine waving his hands.
Little steps and progress…