Page 46

“Sit by her head, mistress. She quiets when you speak.”

Elspeth obeyed. Mara brought dry cloths and a short length of red thread. Her coif had slipped over one eyebrow, and she pushed it back with her wrist because her hands were full.

“There now,” Elspeth told Agnes. “You are under a sound roof. Nobody will move you again tonight.”

“Nor tomorrow?”

“Nor tomorrow.”

Nicholas had granted one night. She would settle tomorrow with him when it came.

Agnes reached for her. Elspeth laid one palm against the woman’s arm and made an open turn of thread across the fingers of her other hand. The midwife watched without speaking. She had seen the work before.

Warmth gathered beneath Elspeth’s palm. It was never quite the same as warming her hands at a fire. She felt Agnes’s effort, the fear with which she braced herself for the next pain, and something resisting where it ought to yield.

“Loose the binding.”

The free end of the thread rose without her pulling it.

Mara drew a sharp breath. Elspeth looked at her, and the girl remembered the cloths in her hands.

Agnes loosened her grip. She had not ceased to suffer, but she could hear the midwife now and do what the woman asked. Elspeth stayed beside her. Sweat ran down her own neck beneath the edge of her hood; once she pushed it away impatiently, then forgot it altogether.

When the child cried, she began to laugh.

“A son,” the midwife said, wrapping him in the waiting linen. “A loud one.”

“Robert ought to hear him,” Agnes whispered.

“He could scarcely fail to.”

Mara lifted the latch. Robert came in so quickly that he struck his shoulder against the doorpost. He scarcely noticed. He went to the bed, knelt beside it, and covered his face when Agnes showed him the child.

Nicholas followed more slowly.

“God bless you, master,” Robert said. “God bless you for taking her in.”

“You know where to come when you need us.”

Us. Elspeth held to the word. But Nicholas was looking at the thread which lay across her fingers, and when she met his eyes, he did not smile again.

The dream carried her from the bedside to an upper chamber. She knew she had left Agnes with Mara and the midwife; her arms ached, and a candle had burned almost to its socket upon the chest.

Nicholas waited beside the bed.

He had brought her a cup and a piece of bread. A sprig of rosemary lay upon the pillow.

“You smell of half the kitchen,” he said. “I thought we might as well have the rest.”

“You brought me that when I first came here.”

“I remember.”

So did she. The strange chamber, her fine new gown, the intolerable wish to be alone with him while women lingered over every fold of the bed linen. Later he had taken the pins from her hood so carefully that she teased him for trembling. He kissed her to prevent her saying more.

She wanted that husband now. She went to him.

Nicholas loosened her hood. One pin caught in her hair; he murmured an apology and freed it. She rested her cheek against his breast while he laid the pins aside. Beneath the damp wool he was warm.