Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Read online

  “Does his majesty know?” he asked the woman.

  She shook her head. “She was resting. I thought she was having her afternoon rest! When I went to wake her, she was away. I’ve been looking. I was…I was on my way to tell the king. Please forgive me, Your Grace.”

  Leofric suspected that the governess would have combed every single inch of the castle, the stables, and the bailey—twice—before she’d have risked the wrath of the king again, and he didn’t hold it against her. Dreda was a handful, and it was only in hindsight that she cared for the impact her actions had on others. Then she cared deeply.

  He set a comforting hand on the governess’s shoulder. “Fear not. All is well. We will all be well served should His Majesty be kept innocent of the day’s adventure.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” She curtsied low. “You have a good heart, if I may say it.”

  He crouched to his sister. “You should be clean and proper and lovely by dinner, don’t you agree?”

  Dreda nodded. “Yes, Leofric.” She threw her arms around his neck, and he embraced her. “Please may I ride with you again soon? That was wonderful! My belly felt like fire!”

  He couldn’t tell her no. “Someday, poppet. Go now, and wash. Be kind to your governess, who has had a much more trying afternoon than you.”

  ~oOo~

  After he left Dreda, Leofric skulked through the service passages of the castle, seeking to avoid his father or his brother, or any other man who might feel the need to address him if they met. He was headed to his own chambers to wash and dress for dinner.

  Just as he arrived at the service door to the corridor of the royal residence, that door opened, and young Edith came through. Seeing him, she nearly dropped her load of soiled linens in her surprised haste to curtsey.

  “Forgive me, Your Grace,” she mumbled. Women were falling all over themselves on this day to seek his forgiveness.

  “Edith. I should be asking your forgiveness. I am in your way.”

  “No, Your Grace. Never.”

  Edith was a lovely young thing, with wisps of soft yellow hair peeking from her prim head covering and a lithe, pert body under her servant’s gown. He’d seen all of her on a few bold occasions when he’d pulled her into his rooms and kept her far longer than he ought to have.

  Today, he had no more time for that than she. But he was feeling high-spirited, from the successful hunt on a lovely day, and from riding with Dreda, not to mention being a paragon of chivalry and goodheartedness, and standing before him, with her head kept deferentially low, was a likely wench at his beck and call. More than that, she was willing.

  He pulled the linens from her grasp and tossed them to the stone floor of the stairwell.

  “Your Grace,” she protested mildly, but didn’t offer more than that reluctant gasp.

  “Correct,” he said and turned her around, putting her to the wall. “I am your grace.”

  With one hand, he lifted her skirts, and with the other, he unlaced his breeches and released his sex. Kicking her legs wide, he pushed a hand between her legs and made sure his passage would be easy. He grinned when he found that it would be, and he pushed into a slick sheath, covering her gasp with a groan.

  He took her hard and fast. When he spent, he pulled out and did so over the pale globes of her bottom, then picked up one of the linens from the discarded pile and wiped her clean.

  He was a gentleman, after all. And chivalrous and goodhearted as well.

  He sent her down the stairs with her bundle restored to her arms, and he went smiling to his chamber to dress for dinner.

  ~oOo~

  The evening meal on an unremarkable day such as this one, with no guests at court of especial note, was a comparatively relaxed affair. There were no speeches or great toasts, no meticulously designed program of bards and troubadours. Simply the king’s musicians, playing in the careful way all court musicians seemed to cultivate, to be both entertaining and unobtrusive. The bishop gave his blessing, and the king opened the meal, and the nobles at court proceeded to fill their faces with the king’s food.

  Always there were people at court who sought the king’s attention, or sought to avoid it, and Leofric, from his vantage at the head table, watched the political acrobatics. Everyone arrayed before them—and, as the head table was set on a dais, below them—was in some way performing. No one who sat before the king in any capacity forgot that fact for even a moment—and on those few occasions when some hapless lord went too far into his cups and did, he rued the day. If he were lucky to live long enough to do so.

  His father was a godly man, who took the counsel of the bishop above all others, and this court was sedate compared to others. A man too far in his cups had likely already taken the ill notice of his father.

  It was why Leofric had been considered such a disappointment for as long as he could remember. He did his duty to God, gave his regular confession and did his regular penance. It was only that his confessions, and his penance, were typically…longer than most. He enjoyed a good time, and that good time was not spent on his knees. Not unless there was a lovely pert bottom before him.

  Without clear proof, Leofric was quite certain that Father Francis, known more formally as His Excellency, the Bishop of Mercuria, did not find the seal of confession as sacred as one would hope. The king seemed to know much more about his adventures than was otherwise reasonable.

  Father Francis, in Leofric’s opinion, was an overblown prat who wielded far too much influence over the kingdom. But the realm had been in peace for some years now, allied with its neighbors and protected by distance and difficult seas from the barbarian invasions their more eastward fellows had suffered. When their allies had been beset, they’d sent soldiers to their aid, Eadric and Leofric included.

  The result, however, of the weakening of their allies was the strengthening of Mercuria. Without mounting any offensive, without losing any alliance, King Eadric had become the most powerful monarch in Anglia. He gave glory to God—and by extension to Father Francis—for that.

  So the fat priest in his rich robes sat at the head table with the king’s family, and Leofric tried not to be caught, by anyone but Francis himself, sneering at the lout’s bulbous red nose that spoke of too much time ‘blessing’ the communion wine.

  A gentle tug on his sleeve drew his attention to Dreda, sitting at his side. She was dressed now as the young princess she was, in a gown of pale blue and crème silk with silver stitching. Her hair was done in an intricate braid, with tiny pearls woven into the strands. A marked improvement over the urchin he’d sneaked into the castle that afternoon.

  “What is it, Your Grace?” They were whispering and probably needn’t have stood on ceremony, but he enjoyed needling her when she was dressed as such a proper young miss.

  “I don’t like this.” she whispered, poking with a golden knife at the aubergine stuffed with…something. He didn’t like it, either. But he knew that a royal who didn’t clean his plate was saying something to, and about, the cook who’d prepared the food on it. He liked the cook. He liked her daughter, Edith, even more.

  “I don’t like it either, but it would hurt Mildred’s feelings if we sent back plates with food.”

  “Can’t we leave it for the hounds?” The hunting dogs got the scraps from each meal.

  He shook his head. “Look at all the people before us, Dreda. Do you see how often they look up at our table?” She looked, and then nodded. “We are the royal family. They look to us to know what is good and what is right. So everything we do, they take a message from. Would you say to them that Mildred is a poor cook whose food is only fit for dogs?”

  She turned to him, her eyes wide. They were the dark blue of stormy seas. Their mother’s eyes. And his own. “No. I don’t wish to make Mildred unhappy. She makes me honey cakes whenever I ask.”

  “I like Mildred, too. So we must eat the food that she toiled to make for us, even if we wish it were honey cakes instead.”

 
Dreda sighed at her plate, then cut a small piece of aubergine and put it in her mouth. Leofric watched as she chewed daintily and swallowed, and he saw her understand without being told that she shouldn’t pull a face.

  “Well done, little sister. You will make a fine queen someday.”

  “I don’t wish to be a queen,” she whispered back. “I want to be a pirate!”

  In her elegant dress and coiled hair sprinkled with pearls, with her big blue eyes and tiny bow mouth, that declaration sounded charmingly, positively ridiculous, and Leofric laughed, full and loud, before he could catch it back.

  Dreda smiled in the vague, faltering way that said she had not quite understood what was so funny, and that made him laugh still more. Below them, the people at court began a halting chorus of laughs, too.

  He despised that. They had no idea what he’d laughed at, but they were so conditioned to share the emotions of the royal family that they picked up whatever sign they might get. Since it had been he who’d laughed and not his father, the chorus never took over the whole room. For a moment, there was confusion. In the way that it died out into silence, he knew that when he turned to his father, he would meet a scowl.

  And he did. Two scowls, both of them named Eadric.

  His brother asked, “Would you share with us the jape?” and Leofric wanted to kick him under the table. He was only four years older than Leofric, but he was the dutiful son, pious and studious. Even as a young boy, he’d never found trouble. Indeed, once Leofric had been old enough to find it, his brother had usually been the one to expose him for it. That remained true.

  Their father, aware of the eyes on them at all times, did not countenance strong showing of feeling in public.

  Mercy, Leofric missed his mother. The queen had softened all their father’s hard edges. She had been light and sweet and loving, and she’d pulled the best of her husband out into the fresh air. Since she’d died, the king, a good man and a great king nonetheless, had turned nearly to stone.

  “Forgive me, Papa,” Dreda said. “I told Leofric about puppies I saw playing in the bailey today, and I made him laugh.”

  Leofric was properly stunned. She had lied for him. She had shown the intuition to know why their father was scowling and how to change the tableau.

  Oh, she would be a great queen indeed if she was learning to manage social drama so well already.

  In public, they were to address each other formally. Only in private might they use given names and informal address. But the one crack in their father’s stone was Dreda. His scowl melted away, and he smiled instead. So did Eadric.

  “Well enough, then, my light. But let us hold back such stories for a better time from henceforth, yes?”

  She dipped in her seat, a piece of a curtsey. “Yes, Papa. Please forgive me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  They all returned to their meal, and the buzz of the room returned to its normal flow. After a moment, Leofric felt a tug on his sleeve again, and he leaned down.

  “Will you take me to Father Francis after the meal?” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “I told a lie. What if I die in the night? I need to confess.”

  The little girl who wanted to be a pirate, stole peasant’s clothes, sneaked away from her governess and otherwise ran circles around the rules was afraid of the tiny untruth she’d told to protect him. He might have laughed again if not for the real worry on her face.

  An intense wave of love for his sister moved through him. She had been brave to lie, when the sin of it frightened her so.

  “You will not die tonight, I promise. You will live a long and wonderful life full of adventures, I promise. And God doesn’t mind lies told to protect another person. That is a kindness, and God doesn’t punish kindness. You have nothing to confess, I promise.”

  Not if she didn’t think the rest of her day worthy of a prayer or two.

  “You’re certain?”

  He put his hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear.”

  “That’s all right, then.” She sighed and went back to her aubergine. “I wish there really had been puppies.”

  The ships—four majestic, beautiful skeids that Leif and Vali had commissioned for their first westward raid the year Magni was born and that had carried great bounty home every summer since—were laded and ready. On the shore, the raiders trained together for the last time before they would set sail in the morning.

  Though the sounds of steel and iron clashing and colliding on linden shields thundered and rang through the air, this training was more play than anything, Astrid noticed. Anticipation for the coming sail, for the feast that would precede it and the raid that would follow it, had spirits high. Even those who would wait behind in Geitland were feeling glad and hopeful. No raider had found Valhalla for three summers, and the people were beginning to feel invulnerable. There was little worry about sending even the young raiders off for their first glory.

  Astrid remained concerned, but she had expressed her opinion, and Leif had heard it. Their preparations had been more serious since she’d spoken with him at the shoreline, and Leif’s tone among them all had been as well. He spoke again of honor, and of Valhalla, and the raiders had trained with more intent.

  But today, with the sun shining brightly over sparkling blue water, and the skeids gleaming at the piers, the sound of swords, axes, and shields clashing made a chorus of celebration.

  Rather than engage in the play herself, Astrid prowled the edge, watching her shieldmaidens, satisfying herself that those about to raid for the first time were as ready as she could hope they would be. Each successive raid had seen more women aboard the ships, and this year was no different. Astrid was, to some extent, responsible for them all—she certainly felt she was.

  The young ones, and the seasoned ones as well, had been dazzled to find the God’s-Eye in their midst. Brenna was no older than Astrid, but her renown had made her esteemed above all shieldmaidens living and most dead. Yet it had been years since she’d raided, and Astrid had had her doubts.

  She’d kept them, for the most part, to herself—and for that she was glad, because Brenna was near as fit and agile as Astrid could remember her being. Watching her now, sparring with Vali, Astrid smiled. Though they sparred with sharpened sword and axe, there was a decidedly erotic cast to their movements, even to the locked look in their eyes. She wondered if the God’s-Eye had kept her form by all manner of wrestling with her warrior husband.

  Olga walked up and stood next to Astrid. At first, she simply observed the training and said nothing, her eyes turned toward her husband.

  Leif was sparring with Jaan, both of them bare-chested like most of the other men, and Astrid had been trying to keep her eyes elsewhere. Not only was Jaan wed, to Karlsa’s flame-haired healer, Frida, but she was with child.

  That news had infuriated Astrid, though not for reasons most would think. She wanted neither husband nor child, but she had enjoyed Jaan, quite a lot, and not merely for his body. He had an impatience with society’s trivialities that she understood. It vexed her to see him bound now, like all the others, to the mundane concerns of the nest.

  But he was manifestly pleased, so she supposed she was happy for him, too.

  Olga laughed. “You’re not raiding yet, Astrid. Is there need to look so fierce?”

  She hadn’t been aware that she looked any way in particular, but her face in repose was not known for its sweetness. Rather than answer Olga’s teasing question, she simply said, “We might be ready.”

  “I hope so, as you leave with the dawn. Leif said you had concerns. Do you still?”

  It was unlike Olga to insert herself in any way into a discussion of such matters. She was not of their people, and she had never fully understood or appreciated their warlike ways. She thus deferred to her husband on those topics and focused her attentions on the things she did understand and appreciate: people.

  But she wasn’t asking about raid preparedness, Astrid su
spected. She was asking if her husband would return to her. If Magni’s father would return. The boy who played with friends in the yard before the hall, swinging wooden sticks at each other in a parody of the raiders.

  “Leif will be home again, Olga. For him I have no concern. He is strong, and he and Vali will have at their backs the strongest of us.”

  One corner of her mouth quirked up in a grateful smile. “But you are concerned still. For the others.”

  “Concern is not a bad thing. It leads to watchfulness and care. This will be a great raid. Perhaps the greatest of them all.”

  The smile faded from Olga’s face, and she turned and watched her husband put Jaan on the ground, then offer his hand to help his friend to his feet.