Chapter 6
Toward sunset of the same day, Kari squinted at the pale blue sky, and turned, faster than a child’s spinning top, to Constantine. “Go to Daddy,” she told Valentine, placing the infant in his arms before either he or his son could react.
Stalking to a rippling brook, she plunged her hand into the water, withdrew it and raised her fingers in the air. Valentine squirmed to be put down and she nodded that he be allowed to walk with them, her face serious.
“Snow comes tonight,” she said. “We must reach Melisande’s shelter before dark. That is close enough for us to reach, before the bad weather.”
“How do you know?” Constantine started to ask, but his wife was already darting on through the woodland, calling to Valentine to chase her. Giggling and wobbling on bandy legs, his son was only too happy to oblige.
“Women!” Constantine grumbled under his breath, feeling the itch of his growing facial stubble as he ploughed into the rising breeze after them.
When they reached a fast-flowing stream that Kari prepared to lead the way in crossing by means of several large stepping stones, he seized the chance to ask what to him was a more reasonable question.
“If snow is on the way,” he began, lifting Valentine off the track and onto his shoulders, garnering a quick smile from his wife for his parental action, “should we not return to the manor, before the paths are blocked?”
She turned to him from her study of the stepping stones, wary as a hind at bay. “Will your men be anxious for you in this coming weather?”
“Not a morsel,” he answered, genuinely puzzled. He had told them, before he left, and in no uncertain terms, that he sought his wife alone and that he would enter her kingdom by himself. “This is snow, not siege arrows. They should know to stay put, whatever the state of their nerves.”
She dimpled another swift grin at his vehemence and, with a glance at the still-pale blue sky, explained, “Snow will fall hard tonight and make travel a dirty business and risky, but soon the landmarks will be clear again, whether the ground be covered in white or not.”
“Soon?” Constantine sensed his wife was not being fully open in this, that she had a plan of her own devising. Enough. ’Tis clear she wants us to stay in her woodlands for a longer space, and so I should trust her. If worse follows, I can always get us out and back. He briefly squeezed Valentine’s legs and ignored his son’s heels drumming against his chest. “Well enough. I think someone is excited at the thought of snow.”
“Sno!” called Valentine, throwing himself back on Constantine’s shoulders, secure that his father would not let him fall. “Sno, sno!”
“Indeed.” Constantine exchanged a glance with Kari as they set off again. “Snow.” I do not want to admit it, but I am excited, too. Kari is right, we need this time by ourselves.
He halted for an instant on the track, aware that his choice of excluding himself from his warriors and the folk of his lands, and his being delighted in that choice, were new—but Kari and Valentine deserve it.
More progress.
• ♥ •
Kari sensed Constantine’s approval all the time they sped through the woodland, felt it like a warm, shielding arm across her back, even as the sun dipped below the trees and the chill breeze blew steadily, as unrelenting as the cry of a wild-cat. Branches and tree trunks seemed to lean closer to them, Valentine yelping once as a cold drip of water spilled from a birch twig onto his forehead, causing his daddy to scowl and fuss over him, kissing his wet forehead and promising him another camel if he was a good boy. The sky through the forest was pink and golden and the many pools of her lands sparkled—all very pretty and about to become more lovely, with frost patterning glowing trails on the grass.
Pretty but deathly, Kari reminded herself and she forced her aching legs to lengthen their strides. Her mouth was dry as the deserts Constantine had spoken of, and her bosom ached with milk. They must stop soon and she would need to feed her son, and somehow scrape a supper together.
Her breath gushed out in a sigh of sheer relief as the circle of hollies came into view.
“Not far,” she said aloud, encouraging herself and her family. Another few steps and she guided them through the holly circle, smiling at Valentine’s delight at the bright yule berries.
Yule again, and I still have not answered Constantine’s question.
No matter. She thrust the faintly guilty thought aside and dipped into the heart of the largest holly. “Watch your feet and head,” she warned her husband, stepping across the drainage ditch that was still here, a full ten years and more since she and Melisande had first dug it out with sharpened sticks and a single shovel.
If only my aunt had been able to reach here, her own winter place, before she broke her arm. If only the wretched church had not driven her to despair.
Kari stamped her numbing feet. She had known where this place was but had avoided it for years. Forced by circumstance to return, she braced herself. What will be left of my aunt? What will I find?
A holly branch swayed against her flank as Constantine lifted it slightly before ducking beneath another, lowering Valentine to the dry, leaf-filled space. She caught the widening of her man’s eyes as he murmured, “A cairn in the middle of a holly?”
She followed his stare to the small, circular mass of stone, wicker and branches and smiled, caught between sorrow and pride. “My aunt’s den.”
“Aunt Melisande, yes? The one who was a shepherd?” Hunched over, Constantine hobbled around the little rocky hut, slapping the walls once and halting with raised brows. “Why under the heart of a holly?”
“Auntie liked to be discreet.” She was not wrong, either. Kari clapped her hands, listening for any animal who might have crept through the narrow entrance. “I shall make a fire.”
She moved to go in, but Constantine put out an arm as unyielding as an iron bar. “I will go first. No,” he added, as she drew breath to speak. “You do not need to thank me. You are my wife. You are both mine.”
Though he said it quietly, Kari felt as though the forest rang with his declaration. A knot of cold stress that she had long carried deep in her chest dissolved into warmth, like the flakes of snow that had just landed and melted on her hand. This is another reason for us to come to my aunt’s den. We are all together here, we can be together, without warriors, stewards, maids or other distractions. She stepped back, lifting Valentine into the shelter of her arms.
The baby, meanwhile, crowed at the glittering, tumbling wisps of slowly falling snow, trying to catch them with eager little fists.
“Sno!”
As it should be. Kari kissed the top of his golden head, stifling laughter when her husband backed out of the den, rubbing one ear and looking a mixture of aggrieved and impressed.
“I ducked, but still struck my head,” he confessed. “’Tis snug within and no creature has used it save spiders and wood mice. There is even a hearth, of sorts, and some sheepskins, ragged now, but warm.”
Kari nodded. Melisande had been tough and delicate, like the hare-bell and snowdrop, survivors of everything that nature and the holy mother threw at them. “There is a pool nearby for water.”
“There is always a pool in these lands of yours,” said her husband, half-grumbling but without heat. “I shall go for water.” That offer was sincerely made, without any comment that fetching water was “women’s work”.
“Good.” She began to sweep together leaves and twiggy kindling with her long gown and her booted feet, allowing her son to carry on with his game of snatching snowflakes.
The ragged sheepskins made an excellent floor-covering and Valentine scampered about the hut, careering between his parents and shouting each time he saw a spider. Soon there was a bright fire on the hearth, a sheepskin across the narrow door to shut out the dark, and a mushroom pottage seething in a leather cauldron warmed by fire-hot pebbles.
Throughout, Kari sensed Constantine, a steady, content presence, a stalwart companion as he had been before he vanished abroad.
They ate well and slept snuggled, with their baby between them. Sometime in the night, Kari heard a deep voice declare, almost as a challenge, “I would be nothing without you. I love you so much, Kari, you and the babe.” She pretended to be dreaming, passing off her start of delight as a slumber-twitch.
Later, when Constantine was softly snoring, she whispered in his ear, “I love you, emperor.”
When we can say it openly to each other, all will be well.
She lay back down, completely missing her husband’s broad smile, lost in the warm shadows of their shelter.