The Beast of Caer Baddan (23 page)

Death!

“That smell is-” Leola said, and looked around. “Drudi?”

Her frantic eyes clung on to Drudi, as she went over a short hill, as if by gazing on the girl Leola could draw her back to safety.

“Drudi, no!” she cried.

Drudi didn’t turn back, and Leola was forced to follow her, scrambling up the slope.

The girl had now stopped, as if frozen, and stared at a gruesome pit before her. Leola did not look into the whole, for she knew by the heinous smell that it was filled with dead bodies.

The boys that the Britisc ridends took.
The women were correct. They are all dead
.

Leola took Drudi about the shoulders and directed her away from the sorry grave site. Although Leola kept her eyes focused on the girl, the stench flooded her nostrils, filling her chest with pain.

“Let us go, Drudi,” she gasped.

They clambered back to the path the way they had come. Drudi dropped down into the grass and sobbed her young heart out. Leola doubled over onto her hands and knees and tried to breathe.

“They are just heads!” Drudi screamed. “Just heads and no bodies!”

“I know,
Dear,” Leola said, between gasps.

She did not actually know but wished to calm the girl down.

“Where are the bodies?” Drudi screamed. “They cannot be heads and without any bodies!”

“Drudi-”

Leola could not go on, for her whole body convulsed and she began to vomit.

“Leola!” Drudi cried. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” Leola said, but speaking only made her vomit again.

“You’re sick!”

Leola gasped and spit. Her throat and mouth burned.

“I’m fine,” she said. “The smell, that is all. Now, forget them. Let us go back. We can find some nettle tomorrow.”

She staggered to her feet and motioned for Drudi to lead the way back to the village.

Chapter Nineteen: Some Explanations

Although it had been the foul smell that caused Leola to vomit, each morning of the following week found her outside behind the house, with her stomach in a knot.

“Leola, are you ill?” Redburga said. “It isn’t the medicine I made you for your foot? I picked those herbs myself.”

“I do not think it is the medicine,” Leola moaned. “I just feel strange.”

She doubled over again.

“Leola,” Redburga said, “Thu bist bearneaca.”

Leola coughed and vomited more at these words.

“You are pregnant.”

Pregnant?

Leola was sure she was not actually carrying a child. What would put that thought into her aunt's head? 

“I doubt I'm pregnant,” she said.

Yet as she considered it, she realized that she had not eaten any wild carrot seeds after her strange marriage.

Leola had assumed that her bleeding was late because she had been frightened and upset. Raynar’s surprise attack, confinement in the mead hall, and finally the lightning as she ran from the Britisc camp, had been blamed for the delay. Now in quiet contemplation, she knew that she might very well be carrying a child.

A Britisc aetheling's child!

“Well?” Redburga said, her eyes filled with concern.

“What?” Leola moaned.

“Are you all right?” her aunt asked.

“Yea.
I simply do not wish to think about it right now.”

“Do not wish to think about it!” Redburga said, in surprise. “What do your mean?”

“It is nothing, Aunt,” Leola replied, frustrated by the prying.

“How I worry for you, Leola,” Redburga said.

“I'm fine.”

Leola went back inside and found the hawthorn leaves Redburga had set out to crush. She rolled up her sleeves and ground the leaves into tiny bits, but her mind was far from the work.

I wonder what he would think if I am pregnant
.

The likelihood of Owain ever finding her, of ever looking for her, was so small that she began to laugh. Her stomach turned in knots once more.

I shall have to wait and see if I am pregnant or not
.

It was the next morning, when a break in the household chores afforded Leola with another opportunity to see Drudi. She wished to reassure the girl that she was not ill, and discover what she thought should be done about the heads.

Leola knocked on the door frame and then opened the door and went inside the hut.

“Drudi?”
Leola said. “Are you here? Drudi? I am quite well now-”

A rising dread filled her. She did not hear, smell, or see anything strange but she seemed to feel that something must be amiss.

She strode through the living room and pulled back the curtain of the bedroom.

There in the far corner of the room, lay a man stretched out on one of the sleeping mats. Leola’s blue eyes peered at him in horror, taking in every detail of his haughty face.

“You!” Leola cried.

“Leola!” the man said, his own face showing his surprise.

“Raynar!” the name hissed through her clenched teeth.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his brow pulled down in a superior frown.

Leola was far too upset to be afraid.

“What am I doing here?” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m wounded,” Raynar whined.

“You’re wounded? I wounded you! You coward! You should have been in the battle and all the while you were hiding from the Britisc like some bandit!” 

“Now how could I fight when you stabbed me?” he snarled.

“You tried to kill me!” she screamed. “What do you think I should have done?”

“Oh shh!” Raynared whispered.

His large hands went up as if to calm
her, and his blue eyes showed fear for the first time. Leola guessed it was for his fame as a warrior and not for actual remorse.

“Do not be cross,” he said. “You are alive. I am alive.”

Leola would not be hushed, for her indignation was far from squelched, and she did not care about his reputation as to worry if anyone heard her angry words. 

“I'm alive in spite of you!” Leola cried. “And you, monster! You are alive because you abandoned our earlmann! For shame!
For shame!”

“I had no choice!” he hissed, keeping his own voice subdued but harsh. “I was wounded! There was nothing I could do!”

It was clear to Leola that he did not want Drudi or her mother to overhear if either of them should return to the hut.

“Wounded for trying to kill a woman!”
Leola replied, and laughed. “How noble!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“I shall speak how I please,” Leola said with disdainful smile, realizing how a little time had changed so much. “I’m no servant here in Anlofton. I can speak when I want and go where I wish to, without fear of ridends who abuse their power.”

She turned her back to him and walked back out to the living room.

“Where are you going?” he yelled back at her.

“Away!” she replied, the front door opened wide. “I’ll not stay in the presence of a coward!”

Leola stomped back to her aunt’s hut and slammed the door behind her. Redburga was kneeling by the fire and started at the noise.

“What is it now?” she cried.

“Raynar!” Leola hissed between her teeth.

“Oh?” her aunt said. “Is that the warrior that Eoforhild is hiding?”

“Who?” Leola asked, confused.

“Drudi’s mother-” Redburga reminded her.

“Yea,” Leola replied. “Raynar is the warrior she is hiding.”

“They found him a while back,” her aunt said, returning to her cooking. “He had been wounded in the battle, fled, and was so hungry he could hardly even sit up.”

“Ha!” Leola cried, catching Raynar’s lie.

“Pretend he is not here,” her aunt continued. “That is what we are all doing. It is safer that way, if the Britisc ridends should ride through again. We don’t want them to find him and kill us for it.”

“The worm,” Leola hissed.

“What?” her aunt asked.

“The villain.”

Redburga set her stirring spoon down and rose to her feet.

“Leola,” she said, her voice revealing her concern.

“I should kill him, Aunt,” Leola said.

I should have stabbed him a second time. I should have stabbed him in the neck. I should have-

“Did he betray you, Leola?” Redburga asked. “Is that his child?”

“What?” Leola said.

She understood the question but somehow did not comprehend it.

“Was he your lover?” Redburga asked.

“No!”

The idea of Raynar lying with her was so repulsive that Leola choked on her own air.

“He was not my lover!” she screamed.

“I understand if he was,” Redburga said, gently. “Husbands often pay little attention to their wives. They pay a lot of attention to other men's wives.”

Somehow, Leola knew that Redburga was speaking from experience, yet did not wish to continue the idea and thus allow her aunt to believe Raynar had made love to her.

“No,” Leola said again, and this time her voice was firm and commanding. “Most definitely not. Raynar is not and was never my lover.”

“Then...” Redburga said, asking but not asking for an explanation for Leola's rage.

“He was a suitor to our earlmann’s daughter,” she said, when she had contained herself. “He tried to kill me-”

“Kill you!” her aunt’s face was filled with shock.

“It is a very long story.”

“Why would anyone wish to kill you?”

“Please, Aunt,” Leola said.

Redburga grew quiet, and Leola felt her watchful gaze.

“Who is he then?” Redburga asked.

“What?” Leola said, in annoyance. “I told you. He is a ridend of Holton. He wished to marry the earlmann’s daughter, and I suppose she must have rejected him. He blamed me for it and tried to strangle me. Satisfied?”

“Oh. No. I mean, who is your husband?”