Chapter Twenty
Bedingfeld Manor
One week later
The fire in the hearth snapped quietly as Eiselle, Bric, and Manducor sat in the hall of Bedingfeld Manor.
It was after sup on a lazy summer evening, and the doors of the manse were open to let the cooling breeze flow through the house.
The day had been a warm one, and the fire was more for light than for warmth.
Servants had brought in banks of tallow candles that now shed their yellow glow around the room, casting away the darkness of the coming night.
Bric and Manducor sat on opposite ends of a small table near the hearth, a vicious game of chess between them.
This was their second game, even though they had been playing most of the week, but the first game took two days before Bric had finally triumphed, and this game was nearing the end with Bric inching towards victory yet again.
Manducor was beside himself because of it.
As Bric had quickly come to learn, the man was a poor loser.
He groaned, grunted, cursed, and tried to cheat his way to victory, but Bric watched him closely and was able to tell when he tried to do anything unseemly.
This thoroughly upset Manducor, who denied cheating to the point of nearly throwing a punch at Bric for the intimation.
But he wasn’t foolish; he’d tangled with Bric before and knew the man’s strength, so not even in the spirit of friendly competition would he try and strike the man.
For certain, he would lose more than just the game.
As Bric sat silently and stoically, studying the game board for his next move while Manducor drank more wine and farted to break Bric’s concentration, Eiselle sat over by the hearth and sewed on the interior for a heavy robe she had been making for Bric, one she’d been working on since before he left for Castle Acre.
She had the leather pieces for the exterior of the robe, tanned and softened by the tanner at Narborough, and now she was stitching together the fine interior that was made of brown wool with a silk pattern sewn into the back of it.
As she worked, her ears were attuned to the men playing chess, fighting off a grin when Manducor would make a spectacle out of himself.
In truth, she’d been watching their relationship for the better part of a week and she was pleased to see that Bric was at least willing to do something other than stare aimlessly from a window.
He’d done that the day after their first walk in the garden, when she’d tried to coerce him into engaging the servant boy and Bric had run off as a result.
She’d come into the manse later to find him sitting in their chamber, simply staring out of the window.
It took her some time to realize he’d been staring at the garden, watching her the entire time.
He’d apologized to her for snapping at her, and she’d forgiven him on the spot.
In truth, she’d forgiven him before he’d even asked for forgiveness, but she still didn’t think it was a good idea for her to cling to him day in and day out.
Certainly, she wanted to be there if he needed her, but she worried that her constant hovering presence would both annoy and cripple him.
And that was where Manducor came in.
In speaking briefly to the priest, she explained her fears, thinking that Bric would need the company of a man more than ever.
A man who understood what he was going through.
Manducor didn’t exactly understand Bric’s demons, but he knew the man needed someone to give him a sense of worth and respect.
Perhaps, it would even help him regain his confidence.
That was why he played chess with him, or backgammon on occasion, resolved to let Bric win when the truth was that Bric was winning regardless.
It was something that had put a smile on Bric’s face, much to Eiselle’s delight.
And there was something more she hoped might put a smile on his face, although she wasn’t quite sure how to tell him.
The nausea she’d been feeling in the mornings and sometimes in the evening had been constant, and growing worse, and even with Bric’s breakdown, he still made love to her every night, telling her how very much he loved her.
It began to occur to Eiselle that she hadn’t suffered through her menses since her arrival to Narborough, which had been several weeks earlier.
With her upset belly and tender breasts, Eiselle was thinking that, perhaps, she might have conceived. In speaking to one of the older female servants that had come with her from Narborough, the woman convinced her that she was, indeed, pregnant.
It was a secret Eiselle had been holding in for an entire day.
She and Bric had never discussed children and given the fact that his nerves were frayed, she wasn’t sure the news would be well-met.
But she quickly decided that the man had to know because it wasn’t something she’d be able to keep a secret forever.
At some point, he was going to figure it out, especially the way he liked to make love to her, so a rounded belly wouldn’t escape his notice.
The man had to know.
But she would tell him later, in the privacy of their bedchamber, because he was enjoying himself with Manducor at the moment.
She continued to sit by the fire and sew, glancing up at him every so often.
When their eyes met, he would wink at her and she would smile in return.
She loved the man so much she couldn’t put it into words, and she knew he felt the same way.
She just wanted to see him well again and although she’d never been one to pray very much, she was coming to pray daily that Bric would find his sense of self again.
He was too great a man not to.
Eiselle was just putting the final stitches in part of the silk pattern when someone appeared beside her.
Looking to her right, she saw that it was young Royce, or Sir Royce as he had introduced himself.
She’d learned that the child who had challenged Bric to a duel with sticks was the son of a woman who worked in the kitchen.
His father, she’d been told, had died the previous year of a fever.
Eiselle had discovered that when she’d asked about the boy, and evidently he wasn’t supposed to be in the garden when the lord and lady were present, so he’d been punished as a result.
All week, his mother had kept him to the kitchens, so Eiselle was surprised to see the lad standing beside her with a wooden plate laden with something baked.
She smiled at him but the smell of baked goods hit her in the nose and with her strange stomach as of late, she immediately felt nauseous.
“Goodness,” she said, trying to lean away from the tray of delights. “What did you bring me?”
Royce didn’t seem particularly pleased to be forced into servitude. “My mam says I should give these to you, my lady.”
Slightly confused, Eiselle looked over her shoulder to the door that led into the kitchen and saw Royce’s mother standing there, smiling encouragingly. Assuming she was trying to teach her son how to be a proper servant, Eiselle played along.
“They look… delicious,” she said. “What are they?”
Royce sighed heavily, as if he wished he was anywhere but offering food to the lady. “Mam made them,” he said. “They have oats and… and honey… and… and currants. Mam says to eat them.”
Eiselle took one of the little cakes simply to appease the child, but she had no intention of eating it. Even looking at it was making her stomach roll. She pointed to Bric.
“Go and ask Sir Bric if he wants a cake,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Turning towards Bric, Royce shuffled his way across the floor. When Manducor saw him approach, he reached out to take more than one cake but Royce quickly pulled the tray away.
“Nay,” he said. “Not you. The lord.”
Eiselle started to giggle, turning her face away when Manducor looked at her in outrage. Bric, however, smiled faintly and with some approval.
“As it should be,” he said. “I should always be served first before this hairy boar.”
Royce held the plate up to him. “Mam says to eat them.”
Bric cocked eyebrow. “She does, does she?” he said. Then, he inspected the small cakes, selecting one. But he didn’t eat it right away and Royce looked at him with some worry, so he forced himself to take a bite. “Delicious. Thank your mam for sending these to me.”
Royce nodded, but he didn’t leave. He simply stood there, watching Bric eat the honey cake. There was wonderment and awe in his expression, much as there had been in the garden when they’d first met. Royce was clearly enamored with Bric.
“Are you a knight?” he finally asked.
Bric was still chewing. “I am.”
“I want to be a knight.”
Bric swallowed his bite and looked at the child.
Clearly, the boy had no concept of the knighthood, or how men achieved such things.
But he remembered from the first time he’d met Royce how the child had been pretending to hold him off with a stick.
But to Royce, it had been the biggest broadsword in the land.
He’d even challenged Bric to a fight, which didn’t go particularly well in the child’s favor.
As Bric gazed at the little boy, he felt himself softening, just a little.
He’d never been around children much, leaving the training for squires and pages to the knights with more patience, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel some compassion for a very small servant boy who had no idea of the way of the world.
In fact, he envied the child for his innocent view of the world.
For Bric, that innocence was long gone, with disillusion and doubt taking its place.
He longed for those days when nothing in the world bothered him.
He wondered if he’d ever know them again.
“Are you sure you want to be a knight?” he asked after a moment. “Why not follow your father? What did he do?”