Tamsin ate slowly, but eventually the meal was finished. Sir Algar declared he’d supervise the repairs to the yard and left the hall, while Rheged went to the upper chamber to get the accounts. Meanwhile, Hildie managed to find a large square of parchment, a pot of ink and some quills, which she set out on the table in front of Tamsin.
She wondered where the accounts were. She’d seen nothing like a scroll or a list when Hildie had taken his clothes out of the wooden chest so she could mend them. Maybe there was a secret compartment in the chest, or the wall, perhaps. Under the bed?
Rheged appeared on the steps from the upper chamber, bearing a wooden box Tamsin recognized as the one containing the little slips of discarded bits of parchment that had been on the shelf.
The ones she’d been using to light the rushlight or the brazier.
Those
were his accounts?
Rheged set the box in front of her with much more force than necessary. “Have you meddled with this?” he demanded, his voice low as he glared at her.
“Yes, but I had no idea those scraps were important,” she replied truthfully, keeping her voice level.
“Scraps?” Rheged repeated through clenched teeth. “God give me patience! What did you do with those
scraps
?”
She couldn’t blame him for his anger this time. If someone had interfered with her accounts at Castle DeLac, she would be furious. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I used them.”
“How, on God’s green earth?”
“To light the rushlight. And the brazier.”
“You
burned
them?”
“I had no idea they were important,” she replied, her regret giving way to frustration. “How could I? They looked like mere jumbles of letters and numbers and ink blots. It would take an expert days to make sense of them.”
“Or a few moments of my time,” he returned indignantly. “But because they made no sense to
you,
you burned them.”
She started to stand.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “I have asked for your help, and you have offered it. Forgive my display of temper.”
The words seemed to be ground out of him with reluctance, but at least he said them, so she would be magnanimous, too. “As I hope you’ll forgive my ignorant destruction of some of your accounts. Fortunately there seems to be enough left to enable us to make a record on this larger parchment. This accounting should be easier to keep safe, no matter who you share your chamber with.”
The moment she mentioned sharing his chamber, she blushed and hurried on, hoping he would attach no particular significance to her words. “We should begin, I think, by dividing your...notations...into different types—food, clothing, weapons and so on.”
“As you wish.” He lifted the box and dumped the contents onto the table.
That wasn’t quite what she meant. Nevertheless she said nothing and began picking up the slips of parchment and trying to organize them.
Unfortunately it was as if the notations were written in some kind of code. Rheged, however, had no such trouble, his long, slender fingers sorting the pieces with surprising ease and swiftness.
But then it should be easier for him. He’d written the nearly illegible notes.
Tamsin smoothed out a small piece of parchment before her. “What does ‘
f
and
p,
ten and twelve
b
’ mean?”
Rheged answered without looking at her or pausing in his sorting. “Fish and peas, ten baskets of fish, twelve baskets of peas.”
“You seem to have bought a lot of peas.”
“Peas are cheap and I like peas porridge.”
“I assume the whole household does, too,” she remarked, adding the note to the pile for foodstuffs. “The total number of baskets of peas you’ve paid for this year is—”
“Three hundred and sixty-two,” he quickly replied, although his attention was still on his task.
She checked the other notes in the pile and discovered he was right. “Have you a list of totals somewhere else?”
“Here,” he said, tapping his forehead.
“You have the totals of all the goods and food you’ve bought and sold this year in your head?”
“Yes.”
Although his expression was serious, he couldn’t be.
She picked up the slips of parchment with notations about fleece and swiftly wrote down the totals and quickly tallied them. “How many bales of fleece have you sold?”
“Sixteen hundred and fifty-two.”
“I have sixteen hundred and forty-two. Perhaps a slip is missing.”
“Check your totals again.”
Pursing her lips, she did.
And discovered she was wrong. The correct answer was sixteen hundred and fifty-two.
“I’ve bought four hundred and seventy-three butts of ale, one hundred and three barrels of wine and ten kegs of mead.”
She checked those figures. He was correct, and he knew it, judging by the satisfied smirk lurking in his eyes and the corners of his lips. “Why do you bother to write anything down at all, then?”
That got rid of his smirk. “I thought I should leave a record of some kind in case I died.”
Died?
“In a tournament or in battle. It does happen.”
Of course he was right to consider his own swift and unforeseen demise, yet it was impossible to imagine him lifeless, all the vitality gone from his muscular body, his eyes dulling with death.
“I realize my writing is crude and difficult to read, but I didn’t know how to write until one of the priests who followed the troops taught me during a lull between battles. It amused him, I think, and gave us both something to do. Before that, I had to keep track of everything I owned and how much I was owed in my head because I had no way to record it. So if you’d rather not—”
“No, no, I’m happy to be of service,” she said, regretting she’d been so impatient. “Since you can recall everything so clearly and I inadvertently destroyed some of the records, I suggest we give up sorting these bits of parchment. You can tell me the totals, and I’ll write them down, and we can begin the new records from there. Unless you’d rather practice writing?”
“God, no. I’d rather run naked in the rain.”
Trying not to imagine Rheged naked in the rain, or anywhere else—which proved to be much easier than picturing him dead—she began to gather the bits of parchment. “I suppose I can use these to light the brazier and rushlights now.” She thought of something else. “If you had all the totals in your head, why were you so angry that I burned some of them?”
“I wasn’t pleased you’d seen how poorly—”
Hildie burst into the hall as if she’d been launched by a catapult.
“My lady! My lady!” she cried, running up to them. “It’s my sister, Frida. Her baby’s coming and she’s asking for you, my lady.”
Tamsin’s hand went to her chest. “Me? I’m not a midwife. Isn’t there a midwife?”
“Aye, my lady, over the ridge. Joseph—Frida’s husband, that is—is going to fetch her. But first he come here to get me, and you, too, my lady.”
“But what can I—”
“I don’t know, my lady, and that’s the God’s honest truth! Joseph doesn’t know, either, except maybe Frida thinks you know everything.”
“I wonder how she came to have that impression,” Rheged said, his eyes on the rafters above as if addressing the angels.
Hildie ignored him, and so did Tamsin. “Joseph, bless his heart, is near frantic. He come with his wagon to take us. Please, won’t you go to her, my lady? Just to say a few words to ease her mind, if there’s naught else you can do?”
“Of course,” Tamsin said. Although she’d never attended a birth before, if her presence could ease the poor woman’s suffering in any way—
“Unfortunately the lady is forbidden to travel,” Rheged said. “Her leg—”
“Isn’t in such terrible condition that I can’t ride a short way in a wagon. I can see the mill from the upper window, so I know it’s not far.”
Rheged knew better than to protest again when he saw that look in Tamsin’s eyes.
Chapter Twelve
“D
oes it usually take this long for a baby to come?” Rheged asked Sir Algar as they sat by the hearth in the hall much later that night.
The evening meal of eels cooked in ale, leek soup and bread had been served long ago, and the tables cleared and taken down. Several of the soldiers had already bedded down for the night on their straw-stuffed mattresses, snoring and snorting and trying to ignore the hounds snuggling in the rushes beside them.
“I gather it can,” Sir Algar replied, refilling Rheged’s goblet with more mulled wine.
The Welshman cupped the goblet in his strong, lean fingers. “She said she knew nothing of childbirth, so why hasn’t she returned? Surely the miller would have brought her back by now if all was well.”
“She’s probably staying until the child arrives. She’s a woman, after all, and women are always excited when babies come.”
“That may be,” Rheged said as he got to his feet, too impatient to wait any longer, “but I’m going to the miller’s cottage anyway. I want to be sure the journey wasn’t too much for her.”
“Go, then, if it will set your mind at ease.” Sir Algar sighed and shook his head. “Sadly, it won’t be long before she must go on a longer journey, back to her uncle and the marriage that awaits her. The more I get to know her, the more I agree with you that that marriage would be a terrible thing. But there’s still the matter of the agreement, and the king. And the lady’s own wishes, of course. She is as adamant as you would be if you had given your word, even if you later came to regret it.”
Rheged didn’t want to think about regrets, either now or in the past or in the future. The lady had made up her mind, and there was nothing neither he nor Algar could do.
Whatever the future held, though, he would first make certain she hadn’t overtaxed her strength today.
He threw on his cloak and left the keep, crossing the yard with swift strides, no longer having to sidestep holes from missing stones. He had never known his hall to be so comfortable, either. Tamsin had worked miracles in the short time she’d been there. Who could say what she might accomplish if she could... ?
But she couldn’t and it was pointless to think otherwise.
He ordered the guards at the gate to open the wicket door while, with his free hand, he took the torch from the sconce at the left side of the thick oaken gate.
The flame flickered and flared as he made his way along the dark street of the village, the moon hidden behind the scudding clouds. The wind whipped his cloak about him, and the air smelled heavy with rain. It wouldn’t be long before it started. A lone dog barked somewhere close at hand, and a dim light shone through the shutters in the last cottage where the fishmonger lived.
Soon he heard the mill wheel making its slow circle in the river, and he could see the shape of the mill and the cottage beside it. The window of the cottage facing the road was dark, and no sound broke the stillness, as if all within were dead.
Dead like his parents, the day he’d come home from begging and found their bodies in the hovel that had been their home, too hungry and weak to ward off the ravages of the coughing sickness.
Dead like so many who’d fought beside him battle.
Rheged quickened his pace.
Dead like that poor family of peasants he’d found murdered by outlaws on his way to a tournament three years ago.
He broke into a run, covering the distance as fast as his long legs could take him until he drew near the miller’s house.
There was a light inside. The shutters had been tightly closed and the light shone through only the narrowest of cracks in the door, but it was light nonetheless. Then he remembered that the house had two rooms, one at the front and one at the back where the miller and his wife slept, and where no doubt their baby would be born.
He pushed open the door and stepped into an oven, or so it seemed. The place was as hot as the smith’s forge in high summer. Steaming pots and pans of water stood near the hearth in the extremely clean and tidy cottage. The furnishings were plain, but well made, and Frida’s loom stood in the corner, a length of weaving half completed on the frame. Two cloaks hung on pegs beside the door, a plain one that was likely Hildie’s and a darker one with a fox fur collar.
Hildie was pouring a bucket of water into another pot, perspiration dripping from her glowing face, while Tamsin sat near the door leading to the back room, her leg propped up on a cushion, her expression like that of a general waiting for word of enemy forces. She looked exhausted as well as anxious, as if she were the one giving birth.
He was about to speak when Hildie saw him standing there. “My lord!” she gasped.
Tamsin started and looked at him with surprise. “What are you doing here?” she demanded while a low moan issued from the back room.
Now that he knew Tamsin was all right, he wished he’d stayed in his hall. “I came to see why you hadn’t returned.”
He walked closer and doused the torch in one of the buckets of water.
“Don’t!” she cried, too late. “We might need that water!”
“You have plenty and Hildie can fetch more if it’s needed. Can I get you something to drink? Is there wine? Have you had anything to eat?”
Another terrible groan filled the air. Hildie sat heavily on a nearby stool.
“I just want it to be over,” Tamsin replied tensely, her eyes full of dread, “and well over!”
“The midwife is here?”
“Yes, and Sarah seems to know what she’s doing.”
“Then surely there’s no need for you both to stay.”
“I can’t leave now, not until I know the baby’s arrived safely,” Tamsin protested. “I’d never be able to sleep a wink anyway.”
Another loud cry, more like a scream than a groan, came from the back room. They all stared at the closed door until a baby’s cry, loud and hearty, filled the silence.
“Oh, thank God, thank God!” Tamsin murmured.
She looked more beautiful in her relief and joy than any woman Rheged had ever seen.
Hildie rose with her hands clasped like a woman beholding visions. “I knew she’d be all right!”
“Aye, thank God,” Rheged said as he marched to the shuttered window, thinking they could all use some fresher air.