Chapter 9 Brynn
Brynn
Brynn was surprised by the weight of disappointment that bore down on her as Cenric disappeared out the longhouse doors. Perhaps it was because he was the most familiar person here. Perhaps she really had been looking forward to tonight.
Maybe she just wanted to be the center of a man’s attention for once.
Brynn had always done the right thing—and Cenric was tantalizingly wrong . He was her husband, true, but she’d married him against her mother’s wishes. He was unsuitable, forbidden.
He had said he would show her how good it could be. Cenric had shown he wanted her body, at least, which was already an improvement.
It shouldn’t matter, but Brynn caught herself hoping it was more than that. Did he like her? Was it just attraction or could he possibly be fond of her as a person?
In many ways, it felt that what she had been through—the war, the loss of Aelfwynn, the loss of her home, six years of a miserable marriage, and the loss of Osbeorn—had aged her far beyond her twenty-three summers, but in some ways, she was still a na?ve little girl.
“This way, lady,” Gaitha said. “Let the men finish bringing in the trunks. They can do something useful for once.” She shot a glare to Edric. “I will show you to your room and around the longhouse.”
“My thanks.” Brynn’s gaze lingered where Cenric had gone.
“Never fear.” Gaitha caught Brynn’s arm and hooked it through hers. “Our lord might be inconvenienced at the moment, but he will be back in no time.”
“Does his aunt often have these emergencies?” Brynn asked.
“Old Aegifu? From time to time. If you ever meet her, you’ll understand.”
“I see.” Brynn let Gaitha lead her toward the back of the hall.
A large hearth took up the center. That would be where most the cooking was done. Two rows of tables and benches lined either side, though they had been stacked out of the way for now. In the back was what appeared to be Cenric’s room, a ladder leading up to the loft over it.
Brynn looked up, taking in the beams that crisscrossed the roof and the carved runes that decked the support pillars. Some of the tables and benches had symbols carved into them, but most were worn smooth with years of use.
It wasn’t a stone keep like Ungamot or Paega’s home, but she could feel the history here. The wood had been scuffed and stained by people long since dead. She could see where Cenric had recently replaced timbers, his own handwork side by side with that of his grandfather.
Brynn had to admit the longhouse was hardly what she was used to, but she felt a pluck of envy in her chest. This was Cenric’s ancestral home. His family had a legacy, a history with the land.
“How long has the family lived here?” Brynn asked, still studying the beams. “How old is this longhouse?”
“Must be over a hundred years,” Gaitha answered. “But Cenric would better be able to tell you. His grandfather expanded it into what it is now.”
The longhouse might be a hundred years old or more, but Brynn could feel that this place had been lived in for longer than that. Ka had sunk down into the earth, rooting deep into the bedrock of the soil.
It was an accumulation of debris—rushes on the floor, scraps of food, and generations of people living over the same spot. Some places in Ungamot felt this way, but not even Paega’s keep was yet this old.
“This place has memory,” Brynn mused. The longhouse appeared ordered and reasonably clean, if well-used. “There have been people here for a very long time.”
“Is that your sorceress powers telling you that?” Gaitha smiled. At least she didn’t seem afraid of Brynn being a sorceress.
“Yes,” Brynn confirmed. “It’s…there’s power in the earth below us.”
Gaitha shook her head. “You’re a strange lot, you sorceresses. Never understood you.”
“Have you known many sorceresses, then?” Brynn looked over her head, noticing the twisting shapes of leaping animals carved into the uppermost beams.
“I knew a sorceress who owned a brothel,” Gaitha said. “Strange creature, she was. But she kept the men from hurting us too much and always patched us up if they did.” Gaitha shrugged. “Treated me better than other masters I’ve had.”
Brynn shot a surprised look at Gaitha. She managed to stop herself from blurting out the first words that came to mind, but her face must have given it away.
“Aye. I was a whore, once. It was another life.” She looked to where Edric was directing several other men with barrels of salted pork. “Now I only have to worry about satisfying one man.”
“But I have the lust of ten men, so be sure to pity her just a bit, aye?” Edric shouted over his shoulder.
Brynn’s face burned. Was this considered normal conversation in Ombra? Would Cenric expect her to banter like this at some point?
“Edric!” Gaitha scolded. “Don’t speak that way in front of the lady.”
“I speak that way in front of you,” Edric countered.
“And I’m not a lady,” Gaitha snapped back.
“You’re my wife and you’re a lady if I say you are!”
Brynn watched the exchange with consternation, not sure if she should intervene or not.
Gaitha rolled her eyes. “Right this way, lady. We’ll leave that animal to his business. I’ll show you to your room.”
Brynn followed her, stepping carefully around the cold hearth in the middle of the room.
Cenric might have recently repaired this place, and his grandfather might have built it, but the roots of the building were deeper than that. Brynn wouldn’t be surprised if wattle and daub huts had once stood in this same spot, or even tents made of animal skins. Envy returned, twisting in her chest.
Istovari sorceresses had no roots this deep, no place this old to them. They kept up their network of connections, a sisterhood of women spread across Hylden and beyond. They married their daughters to aldermen and wealthy thanes and gathered to make decisions. Many served in the households of those who could afford them. A few traveled from place to place like journeymen, taking coin for work where they could get it.
But they had no homeland. Not really.
Brynn’s mother had told her the goddess Eponine had given them a gift in depriving them of their own country. It meant they were free to belong anywhere, or nowhere, as they chose.
Brynn had tried to remember that as a child when they were shuffled from shire to shire after her father’s death. Selene had left Brynn and her sister behind, going to seek the help of the Istovari Mothers, but Winfric’s armies had been after the girls, forcing them from their home.
Aelfwynn had pragmatically decided to ally with Aelgar, recognizing him as king. Brynn’s sister, for all her brashness and defiance, had known Hylden would never accept a woman as ruler.
Their mother had been furious when she’d found out. So furious that Brynn had wondered if her mother had wanted Aelfwynn to make a claim to the kingship anyway.
All through the war, the sisters had fought for their homeland, starving in forests and freezing in fields, all the while knowing their home at Ungamot would be forfeit even if they won.
Through those hard years, Brynn had ached for stability. She had wanted desperately to go home—never really knowing where that was. She’d hoped to find that in Glasney, but Paega never let her feel at home.
“Here you are.” Gaitha pushed aside a wooden door at the very far end of the longhouse. It slid open on well-oiled hinges. Above it, a ladder led up to a loft overhead. “The younger boys and unmarried thanes sleep there.” Gaitha pointed up. “They know to be quiet, but they sleep and guard in shifts, so you might hear them stomping around at night every so often. The girls have places around the main hearth.”
Brynn stored the information away for later.
“But this is your place in here.” Gaitha stepped inside, pushing the door open the rest of the way. “Cenric had me get it ready for you.”
Brynn stepped after the other woman, not sure what to expect. Inside, her trunks had already been set down at the foot of the bed.
A fireplace sat at one side, one of the few stone features in the longhouse. Brynn realized the chimney went through the loft, providing a source of warmth above. The fireplace was cold for now, but a pyramid of sticks sat ready to be lit. The bed had been covered in animal skin pelts.
At first glance, Brynn thought a man stood in the corner, but it was a full suit of chainmail with greaves, bracers, and a shining helm with the design of a snarling wolf.
“That might be your husband’s most prized possession.” Gaitha nodded to the armor.
Brynn could see why. Mail was rare, much less a full-length tabard of it. That alone was probably worth three good horses or more. It might be as fine as Aelfwynn’s had been and hers had belonged to their father.
“This is Cenric’s room, then?”
“Well, both of yours now.”
Brynn hadn’t shared a room with Paega. He had been wealthy enough that they had separate chambers, but she’d already known Cenric wasn’t as rich.
“I’ve tidied it up.” Gaitha smoothed a hand over the furs on the bed. “I imagine you’ll be wanting to rearrange the furniture. In fact, I suggest you do. It will be a good lesson to teach that husband of yours after leaving you alone on your first night here.”
Brynn frowned at Gaitha. “Isn’t he your lord?”
“Aye, and I’m as loyal to him as much as anyone. But it’s best a wife never let her husband get away with anything, trust me. Next thing you know, the men are walking all over us.”
Brynn exhaled slowly. “I’ve been married before.” And she’d learned from her mother that not all women could be seen as allies.
“Ah.” Gaitha paused, taking in Brynn with a pensive look. “What happened to him?”
“I left him,” Brynn answered. “The king gave me a divorcement.”
Gaitha’s brows rose in surprise. “How long ago?”
Brynn considered it. “I left my first husband three months ago. The king granted a divorcement a few days ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Gaitha said sincerely.
Brynn frowned. “I…why are you sorry?”
“Leaving husbands is a messy business, hardly something a woman does for amusement. I’m sorry.”
Brynn looked down. She expected judgment, not acceptance, and certainly not sympathy. “Thank you. I didn’t want to do it, but…after my son…” She trailed off, not sure how to explain it.
She knew that if she stayed with Paega, her mother would push her to have another baby with him. And she couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it—to herself or to her children.
Gaitha fluffed the pillows at the head of the bed. “You have children, then?”
Brynn opened her mouth, then shut it, unable to give voice to the words.
“I see. No need to explain, lady.” Her face softened in understanding before she glanced around the room. “I’ll oversee the evening meal. I’ll send one of the girls to show you and your maid to the bathhouse. Would you like that?”
Brynn wasn’t sure what that meant, but a bath sounded pleasant. “Yes. I would.”
“You must be tired from your journey, lady. We can introduce you to the servants and the rest of the household tomorrow.”
Brynn inclined her head. “I am grateful, Gaitha.”
The freckled woman took Brynn’s hands in hers. “Please send for me if you need anything at all, lady.”
Brynn waited until the door shut before sitting down on the bed. The mattress crunched as she did, probably filled with pea shells or something similar. She touched the furs on the bed, soft and clean.
She didn’t need an easy life. She didn’t need a safe life. Like she had told Cenric, she wanted a life of freedom. From the lack of ceremony and the comparative humility of this place, it seemed to her that it was exactly what she was looking for.
Brynn inhaled a deep breath, still hearing Edric and Gaitha banter on the other side of the door. She closed her eyes and counted backward from ten.
This was nothing like what she had expected, or what she was used to. Yet, she had been uprooted many times in her life and survived every one of them.
But she was tired. When she had married Paega, she had been sure she would spend the rest of her life in his lands, living out her days among a people to call her own.
Now here she was, starting over once again, for what felt like the hundredth time in her life.