The Seasons of Salt

Chapter Nine

They set up camp for another night, in the end. They’d had to stop to bathe the baby for Wyvona had insisted that it needed to be kept clean as well as warm and Rowley had no desire to accidentally kill it before he’d even got it home, and that slowed the passage down somewhat. Some of the men were grumbling, and he could not say he blamed them. It was a hard thing to be so close to home – within eye-shot of it in the distance – and still stop before they reached rest. Dixon had passed him a mead cup silently though as they stopped around the fires and Rowley chose to take that as another apology. He sent the wet-nurse and the child to a tent and set a couple of his most trusted men to stand guard outside it, and tried to dismiss the pair of them from his mind.

He wondered if part of him was avoiding returning really. If, had Féon been waiting to welcome him home with an open heart and an open bed, he might be riding through the night to reach her but either way, he had made the call and everyone had stopped.

He played his part tonight, as he knew he must. A Large Lord knows his men from his vassals to the foot-soldiers. Men will march and die for a Large Lord they can believe in...and all the other truisms his father had boxed into his youthful ears. He had scarcely listened at the time. He had thought he had years before he needed to really know them. Fourteen. Fourteen and the Large Lord of Aridshire. Ryland was over half that age. Eight now. He’d had his Nameday whilst Rowley had been gone.  Had he taught his son enough to inherit Grimkeep if he passed too soon? The thought was sobering to him, even as he laughed and joked stiltedly with a forced humour he was too tired to make convincing. Stern commands but smiling firesides buy loyalty time out of mind. His father had been full of them. He had barely passed any of them down to Ryland. Ryland was still such a child, still clinging to Féon’s skirts and she let him. She wanted them to be babies and he had not the heart to take them from her yet.

Mayhap he ought to write them all down, then at least Ryland could read them when his father was dead. Or was that cowardice? Ryland was his boy, after all. It was his duty to ensure the lad was prepared for all that Aridshire had to offer. And his ancestors knew that Aridshire lived up to its name. Arid, bare, grim wilderness. He had had to raise his banners to defend Grimkeep by the time he was fifteen, from his own vassal no less. Frignal was always ambitious. Objected to being ordered about by a youth. Taken a gamble, hoping for Large Lordship. Lost his head instead. Lost his whole house. Rowley had given the seat at Burkehead to the Astleys instead, after the Frignal heirs were all dead and the widow and daughters were shipped back home to her father’s house. Nobody underestimated the youthful Large Lord after that. Mayhap Frignal had done him a favour.

Ryland would be sure to face the same though, if Maxon died too soon. The House was only as strong as its lord; the county only as strong as its Large Lord; the country only as strong as its king. When one was weak, so were all the others. Was that not why they went to war in the first place? To rid themselves of the small and cankerous Ferris Royce and his weak-willed submissions.

Rowley drank too much and laughed too little to cheer the fireside much that night, despite all his best efforts and he took himself to his own tent to rest fitfully before the midnight hour had turned. The morning rose all too soon. The dragon-spawn had howled throughout the night and nowt that Wyvona had done could calm him – another thing the men had grumbled about. Mayhap the fire-beast knew he did not belong here, Rowley thought fancifully.

He’d forgotten what it was like to have a babe in the house. Soon Grimkeep would be echoing with the cry of it, down every sun-baked, wind-blown corridor and turreted tower. Erilla was six now. The days when she had howled the castle down were long since past. He had gotten used to sleeping a whole night through. He was not sure he could go through it again, to be honest, but he had sworn his bloodoath, so he supposed he did not have a choice. He stroked his fingers over the deep scars again. They were healing badly. He hoped dragon salvia did not have some kind of poison in it. Mayhap he should have asked before he had let them drink from him, only he supposed they could have lied to him. They knew so pitifully little about the dragons that had hunted them for so long and now he had one under his care.

He sighed long and low, unable to shift the weight settling on his chest like armour. He would give a great deal to know that he had done the right thing.

He sent a scouting party up ahead of his main regiments, rising them early to send them across the rocky slopes to Grimkeep to prepare them for his return and had set about getting the men in marching orders for the last day home.

Burne had split his forces off just before lunchtime, and the others stayed to the Holloway as Rowley peeled his regiments off. He’d dismissed the peasantry back to their own villages and hopeful hearths and had taken his household up the last slope to Grimkeep, waiting high and looming on the hilltop. The trumpets at the battlements sounded their return triumphantly, and the drawbridge had been lowered before they had even reached the foot of the moat.

Wyvona sent a sharp look at the moat as the passed over it; like the urach, dragons were not fond of salt water, and she huddled closer to him, walking in step with him like a shadow. It irritated him a little, actually, which, mayhap, was her intention. Was she making a statement to Féon? What would Féon think, seeing her husband walking through the gates with another woman and a child? She’d not notice the eyes at first. She’d think her a camp follower, mayhap – though Wyvona did not dress like a camp-follower, and none of those women would have the audacity to come so close to the Large Lord of Aridshire, walking beside him as an equal.

Well, what could not be avoided must be faced. It was too late for recriminations now.

“Father!”

The sound was bright and keen and it sliced like an arrow-head across his heart. Despite himself, he felt his face split into a grin as Erilla ran across the courtyard fast, her black hair bouncing with every step. She threw herself up into the air and Maxon caught her by reflex, whirling her up in his arms.  She buried her little head in his neck and he chortled out a laugh. Ryland had come running up too. He was older, Ryland. They had had him almost straight away. Poor Brynn Dowse had been sour about that. He'd been years of trying with his wife and then his little sister took to child almost as soon as they'd been wed. Féon had been overjoyed.  Then had come a miscarriage, lost early, before she’d barely started to swell. Funny, she had not turned cold over that. Had not grieved so much as she had for the still-born, had been so confident other children would come, had been so wrapped up in her bonny lad – and mayhap she had been right to be confident. Erilla had come swimming along without any trouble at all only a few months later. He ran a hand over her thick black waves and she squealed with delight. His eyes met Féon’s across the courtyard, as she stood there, rigid and sharp in her light, draping chiffons.

He’d told the scouts to tell her that a dragon-hostage was coming. He’d wanted to prepare her. Mayhap that had been cowardice and not consideration though. He’d known she was going to react like this.

He let his daughter slip down easily beside him, and stretched out a hand to ruffle his son’s hair and then beckoned Wyvona forward beside him as he crossed the interminable stretch of courtyard, filled with the watching eyes of his household, towards his wife.

“Féon, this is Princess Wyvona of the Dragon-folk. She is acting as wet-nurse to our hostage, and will be our guest here for a while.”

Féon’s eyes turned to the child nestled in the swollen breasts of the other woman. Wyvona pulled the child closer to her cloak, so that the child’s face – the only part of it which she had deigned to expose to Aridshire air – was buried in her own chest. She glowered with undisguised dislike at Féon, hatred swirling amongst the ever moving reds and yellows in those pupils.  Féon did not notice. Her face had not lost its hard edges, the sharp cheekbones were buried beneath sharper fingers, reddened by the cold air, as her hand crept unknowingly to her cheek. They looked like washer-woman’s hands, bony and reddened like this, instead of the hands of a fine lady. Everything else about her was dressed up in finery, silks and chiffons, jewels and brooches, but her hands were bare, bitter and chafed.

“The child – the baby – is the hostage?” She turned her eyes back to his at last, but he found he could not read them.

“I gave my blood on it,” he said as sternly as he could. Stern commands and smiling firesides. Well, he and Féon had not had the latter for a long while, but he could still do the first. “And what is more, I gave my honour. I promised his parents that, as long as the peace held, we would raise him alongside our own. Without revenge or retribution.”

“It’s a boy,” she said faintly.

Maxon stared at her for a long moment. She did not say anything more. He nodded, more to himself than to anyone else.

“I have messages to send,” he said curtly. “See the guests set up in suitable accommodations, Féon.”

She put a hand on each of her children’s shoulders as Erilla started to pout and complain, hushing the child into silence, but her eyes had already turned back to the babe.

She had not even welcomed him home. He had not really expected as much, mayhap, but the thought infuriated him a little anyway. He heard his boots stomp mayhap a little more heavily than necessary on the sodden wooden steps up to the inner doors.

There was a drink and a plate of grapes already waiting for him in his solar when he reached it and, on a more generous day, he might have thought the fact that Féon had ordered it for him in time for his return was a silent sign of love – or at the very least gratitude that the father of her children had come back to Grimkeep alive. Today he suspected that a maid had done it unprompted when she had heard that the Large Lord was riding over the hilltop, arriving this very day. He threw himself down into the hard wooden chair behind the desk and rubbed his face wearily and stared up at the ceiling. It stared mockingly back.

Glengower was going to rant and rage and call it treachery when he heard what Rowley had done. Betrayal. Oath-breaking. They had gone to decimate the dragons, not adopt them. Cosying up with the princeling. Tempting the men to discontent.

They’d not have taken out a third of the dragon’s fighting men though without the life of the little prince. Nor taken the head of the king. And, mayhap, if they raised the little fire-beast to think of mortals as men and not meat, they could even send him back one day to broker a lasting, permanent peace.

And if Glengower wanted more than that, he could do it himself.

He would not though. Could not. The Black Bear was a fearsome foe on the battle-field and in the council rooms, it was said, but his home-seat, Westbrush Hall, did not command many men, even with his wife’s wealth behind it, and the shadowed glory of his cousin’s crown. Certain-sure not enough to challenge the might of Aridshire. Even Aridshire will not be loyal forever.

Dowse would bring Bridgenford to his defence if it came to that – not for his own sake, though he was close with his brother-by-law, but for Féon’s. And, in truth, nobody would want another war so soon. Not yet. They had not even finished winning this one yet.

He snorted derisively at himself. Mayhap there was no point worrying about it at all. If somehow Ferris pulled a last-minute victory from his parade of losses, the king would call them all high traitors and hang their heads from his battlements like fete day flags anyway. He would take Rowley’s own son, mayhap, and send him to the dragons as fitting payment, like for like.

There had been no other way. And such a thing was not likely, after all. Ferris was holed up now in the Deai castle, whilst Glengower and his companies slowly took the rest of the Brenin peninsula out from under his feet. Dowse was keeping Holdfast, stopping any aid from getting through, Tulliver was guarding the Wasteland Woods to stop the hags from helping their craven ally, and he himself had ensured the dragons did not have the strength to intervene. It was their war to lose, now.

He sighed as he pulled the inkpot towards himself and found some parchments in his desk drawer. He was not ashamed of his decision, stood firmly by the fact that it was right, but finding the words to make his friends and allies also believe that, without appearing to beg for their pardon or seek to make excuses for himself, weakening his position in their eyes, would be a difficult task. And one he would have liked to commit himself to after he had tasted the pleasures of home.

Still, he had needed an excuse to be out of his lady wife’s cold welcome without humiliating either of them before the servants, and this served as well as any.

He wrestled with the missives all afternoon and finally set his seal to them as the darkness set in earnest beyond his windows. He sent a maid scurrying with them to the Corryns' Tower and then made his way to his great hall for the first taste of a home-cooked meal he had been yearning for out there in the cold and endless marches.

The hall was full tonight. He did not insist on regular attendance or particular hours when it was not a feast day, but it seemed everybody had crowded in today, all longing to eat together. He could see Millerson down there, his arm around a pot-washer he’d never wed, laughing raucously below the salt. One of the kennel boys was sitting by the roaring grate. He’d found some drumming sticks and was playing them against the metal fender whilst a couple of maids danced and sang about him. The high table was bursting too, Ryland and Erilla sitting there betwixt their Nanna and Tutor in their best clothes and best behaviour; his steward, Rolfson, talking earnestly to the Captain of the guard. Only two chairs were empty, his own and Féon’s.

He felt his chest tightening his unexpected anger. He seized the arm of a maid who was passing, her hands heavy-laden with an over-flowing earthenware jug.

“Where is my wife?” he snapped impatiently. She had barely shown any emotion at all at his return. He had not expected an outpouring of relief and gratitude, of course, but she stood there in the courtyard beside the household staff as if she were welcoming a stranger home. He had left – possibly to his death – and she welcomed him back to his own house without anything more than cold duty. And now she was nowhere to be found on the very night of his return! He did not expect much from her, he had never forced himself into her chambers, had never demanded pretty lies or professions of affection he knew she did not feel, but by all the spirits, he did deserve a little respect. Their staff saw everything, after all. They would be laughing behind their hands at the Lord who was so discarded by his own wife.

The servant he had barked at stepped back hastily and bobbed a quick curtsey.

“In her chambers still I believe, my Lord. She has not come out all afternoon.”

“She will come out to dine,” he growled. He turned on his heel without taking his seat, and the door slammed shut behind him. He knew he was making a scene, knew he was only giving them more to mock him for, but he could not help it. His blood was singing with the humiliation of it all. She would dine at the High Table with him, even if he had to drag her there by her hair.

He took the spiral stairs three at a time and barged into her private chambers without knocking. The door flung back on its hinges, bouncing loudly against the stone walls.

“Hush, Maxon. You’ll wake him!” Féon chid. He paused, wrong-footed, at the scene before him. Féon there, sitting by the fire roaring in the grate, cuddling the child swathed up in blankets, pressed to her chest. She was on her old rocking chair, the one she had nursed their own two children on. She had not allowed him to get a wet-nurse, he recalled, and she had been so adamant that he had relented. She had had that chair sent out of her rooms after the still-birth. He’d thought she’d had it chopped up for kindling. He did not know whether it was a good sign or not that she had kept it. That mayhap part of her still held out hope that her womb would quicken again one day.

He closed the door softly and stepped up towards her. The fire was blazing hot as he knelt gently by her feet, but he did not move away.

“It has to be hot. That’s how he likes it,” she cooed, reading his flickering gaze. “We have to keep him warm.”

“You have been cradling him all afternoon?”

“Of course. A baby needs to be held. That’s how they know they are loved. And they will not live unless they are loved. Nothing can live without love, Maxon.”

He knew that. By all the ancestors that went before him, he knew that well enough.

“What did Wyvona think of that?” he asked wryly.

“Who? Oh, the fire-beast? Not much, but she did not have a choice. I sent for her whenever he needed food, and that is all a wet-nurse is for, after all. Oh, I do wish I could feed him myself.”

“He is her nephew,” he said gently.

“And he is my boy,” Féon said, looking up to meet his gaze with fire and fury. “That was what you said. That you had given your blood on it, that you had staked your honour on it: that we had to raise this child as our own.”

“I did not say we were to raise it as our own, I said we would raise it with our own.”

“It is the same difference. It is ours. It is mine. It is the gift of the Fae to replace our poor broken boy. The one they stole from us. They have given us this beautiful baby boy instead.”

Maxon did not say anything. He had anticipated her anger. He had not anticipated this…keenness. This manic, desperate love. He stroked a finger down the child’s face gently. It was warm to the touch, but it did not scald him as his mother’s had done. Was that because the queen had been in labour, or was it because she had been an adult, where the child was scarcely a week old? There was no way of knowing.

“Are those Ryland’s old baby gowns?” he asked suddenly, frowning. There was a mountain sigil sewn intricately into the hems in a repeating pattern, tiny rising suns peeking behind each one. He distantly remembered Féon churning away at it when she was fat with their first-born, desperate to finish it before the child arrived, determined that it would be the longed for male-heir if she could. He had not realised his wife was so superstitious when he married her.

“They are a perfect fit for him!” She beamed. “It is a good sign, is it not?”

Maxon stood.

“You should come to dinner,” he said. “You need to eat. You will need to keep your strength up if you are going to mother this child. Give Bara to his wet-nurse. I am sure there will be time enough to hold him again after you have fed.”

“Bara? Who would name a beautiful child after poorman’s bread?”

“It means The Last Hope in the dragon tongue, apparently. His parents’ were insistent that that was his name.”

Féon sniffed with a little of her old disapproval seeping through her happy new-baby glow.

“Well they are dead, and he is not of the dragon-spawn anymore. He is a Rowley now. A child of Aridshire. He needs a northern name.”

Maxon did not say anything, he just held out a hand, and Féon took it. Her hands were warm where she had been cradling the little thing. He was pleased to find it. They had been so cold of late. She stood, stretching up upon her toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

“I will be down to dinner shortly,” she said with a gentle and genuine smile he had not seen for many long years. “Go. I will give my son to his nurse and I will join you there. I promise.”

Maxon hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

“Oh, and Maxon?” He turned in the doorway. She was silhouetted against the firelight, the perfect picture of mother and child. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for this gift. Thank you for all of my beautiful children.”

He just nodded again and left before she could say any more, but he was more troubled as he returned to his seat in the dining hall alone than he had been infuriated by her absence and he was starting to wonder if he had done right at all.

*****

He woke abruptly that night. The curtains of his bed had been drawn back and he had slept so heavily that he had not noticed it. The warm glow of the dying fire suffused the room with amber light, casting thick shadows over the figure now perched upon him.

His first blurry thought was that it was Wyvona, though what she would be doing in his bedchambers after the midnight hour, he had no idea. But the shape was too lean, too taut and the hair cascading down her back was a lighter, thicker brown.

“Féon?” He croaked, squinting at the abrupt light. “What-? Is something the matter?”

She had pulled the covers down to his knees and was sitting astride him now. One hand ran idly up his thigh underneath the hem of his night-shirt and he felt his body responding instinctively.

He tried to sit up, but she pushed him down with the hand which was not still rising up to meet him. He let himself be downed, arching his back up to meet her with a soft grunt. It had been so long. It had been a lifetime.  He was not a man to send a gift away, even one as unexpected as this.

“I have thought of the perfect name for our boy,” she said. Her voice was low, barely a purr in the still night-time world. He leant his head back against the pillow.

“You come to tell me this now?” His voice was strained a little, but she did not seem to notice it. She pushed his night-shirt all the way up to his waist and sat full astride him, until he was buried within her. He grunted a little, his hands finding their way to her thighs and digging in there in nail and claw. She was warm, by all his ancestors, she was so warm, and he had missed it so much.

Her own hands had risen up to tangle in her hair as she rolled above him. Her eyes were squeezed tight shut, just as he had recalled it. Strange, she barely seemed to have changed at all. He tried to roll her over, but she would not let him, squeezing him tighter.

“Caedric,” she said. “We’ll call him Caedric Rowley. Caedric Maxon Rowley.”

He knew she meant that as a gift too. She had not wanted to name Ryland after his father after all. To give the dragon-spawn his name was supposed to be a peace offering after all these years, but it scratched against his skin now. That was what she was thinking of as she rode him? No man likes to hear another name in his bed. Especially not the name of his hostage-son. He tried to push her off, but she would not be dislodged, so he sat up instead, bringing them closer. Her eyes shot open as he fell deeper within her and they were so close to his. River-eyes.

“Not another word,” he growled and she laughed – actually laughed. She let him roll her over so that she lay underneath him instead and succumbed to the panting, growling silence, but she pushed him off before the end, so perilously close to the end.

“Féon?” He was panting, sweating – frustrated.

She stood, letting her night-gown drop back down to her ankles as she clambered away from him.

“I will not make my body a tomb again, Maxon. Not even for you.” She pressed a hard kiss to his lips, hungry, needing, grateful, and had left before his fumbling mind could find any words at all.