Chapter 25
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Chessa took a final bite of porridge, and slowly licked the wooden spoon, for Argana’s honey was as sweet as Cleve’s kisses.
She offered to assist Argana but the woman only shook her head.
“Once you live here and aren’t here as a guest, then you will have duties you select but not before then.
Is it true that Merrik and Laren and all the Malverne men will leave soon? ”
“Aye,” Chessa said. “There is no reason for them to remain. This is my husband’s home, not Malverne.”
Argana gave her a look she couldn’t begin to understand.
“What will you do, Argana?”
“What do you mean, Chessa? Do about what? About Varrick, my husband of eighteen years, the man who would have killed me with little regret? I will do nothing. What can a woman do about anything, save serve and hold her tongue when she’s angry, mayhap even bite her tongue until it bleeds?”
“You could tell him he’s a swine.”
Argana stared at her, then threw back her head and laughed.
She couldn’t seem to stop laughing. Chessa began to laugh with her.
All looked at them, mouths agape, eyes furtively searching out the Lord of Kinloch.
Chessa said, “Why is there no joy here? No laughter? You laughed and it is very nice, Argana, yet look at your people. They are shocked that we laughed and perhaps even frightened.”
“Cayman laughs sometimes,” Argana said. “But she goes off by herself to do it. I’ve seen her in the hills, walking about, picking flowers just as your Kiri does, and she’ll sniff the flowers and then smile, then perhaps she will laugh.
It is a sweet sound. Cayman was always a sweet child and a sweet girl, but she has lived here all her life, and that, Chessa, is too long.
You saved my life. I’ve said nothing about it to you because I—” She paused, staring down at the cut on her thumb.
It was red and swelled. “I wonder how I did this. I have no memory of it.”
“It’s ugly and must be tended. I have some cream that Mirana of Hawkfell Island gave me. You will rub it into the cut. It will heal.”
She left her then to go to the small chamber.
In the sea chest at the foot of the box bed, she found the medicinal herbs Mirana had given her.
She fetched the cream back to Argana and handed it to her.
“Rub it in well, at least three times a day, and keep it clean. Mirana said healing comes more quickly if left to the open air.”
As Argana touched the white cream to the cut, there came a shadow that covered both of them. Chessa shivered, looking over her shoulder to see Varrick watching his wife as she smoothed the cream into the cut. “What are you doing, Argana?”
“I seem to have cut my finger, though I don’t know how I did it. Chessa gave me some healing cream for it.”
Varrick looked for a brief instant as if he would grab the cream from her and hurl it into the fire pit, but then he only shrugged and said, “Chessa, I would speak to you. Cleve is with Kiri and Igmal, both of them teaching her to ride the pony I had Athol bring back to her from Inverness.”
Argana didn’t even look up. If her finger that was smoothing in the cream paused a moment, that was the only sign that she’d even heard what her husband had said.
“All right,” Chessa said, smiling at Argana. “Don’t forget, rub in the cream at least three times a day. The cut will heal very soon. Now, Lord Varrick, what is it you wish to say to me? Something that will make me laugh? You need some laughter here at Kinloch.”
“I wish to speak to you of Caldon. I called to him early this morning, but he didn’t come to me.”
“Perhaps Caldon is female,” Chessa said, her voice as cold as the spring to the south of the loch, surrounded with mossed rocks and slippery grass and overhung with full-leafed branches of maple trees. “Perhaps she grows tired of your orders and your domination.”
“Perhaps,” he said, and his voice was even colder. “Come walk with me, Chessa.”
She nodded. There was no reason not to. This man was her father-in-law.
She would know him until he died. Unfortunately, at this moment, he looked fitter than the goat that was chasing Kiri into Igmal’s arms. For an instant, she wondered about his magic, if there was such a thing, and she looked at the burra in its sheath at his belt.
She remembered clearly the stark cold and frightening heat of it, and the image of her mother.
She said to Argana, “I will walk with my father-in-law, Argana.” She felt him stiffen beside her, knew he hated her saying that, and it pleased her.
She was determined that soon there would be laughter at Kinloch, that there would be normalcy—bickering, arguing, jesting, wrestling, children yelling at each other, all of it, all of what life was meant to be, not this coldly oppressive atmosphere that Varrick had brought to Kinloch.
“So, you wish to speak of Caldon?”
He said nothing until they were beyond the hearing of any of the Kinloch people. “The sun is bright this morning,” he said finally. “It is a fine day.”
She laughed. “Not for long, I wager. Every time I’ve believed that the sun would remain strong and bright, the mist rolled in and reduced it to nothing in but minutes. Should you care to wager about this, Varrick?”
“Why don’t you call me lord?”
“You’re my father-in-law. Why should I? Don’t you know that I respect you since you’re my husband’s father?”
He looked as if he wanted to strangle her. “I will wager that the sun remains high and strong today,” he said, his white slender hands still fisted at his sides. “If I am right, I want something from you.”
“What would that be?”
“I want you to bear my child.”
“You what?” She stared up at him, so surprised that no other words formed in her mind. “You what?” she said again.
“I can’t kill my own son and take you. Thus you will be my concubine and bear my child.
Cleve will never know. But the child we produce will have more skill in the magic arts than I have, than your father had, Chessa.
You owe it to the force of all that remains hidden from mortals to produce a child who will claim an inheritance no man has ever possessed.
Forget the stupid wager, I did not mean to say it.
This is more important than you or your husband or anything.
Tell me, Chessa, will you be my concubine?
Will you bear my child who will be a great sorcerer? ”
She stared up at him and said very calmly, “So Cleve was right. You would have killed Argana to have me. But it was a stupid plan, Varrick. Cleve was right again. What would you have done then? Killed your own son?”
“Nay, he wasn’t right. I would have killed Argana because it was a matter of honor. I want you, but not as my wife since you are married to Cleve. Answer me now, Chessa. Will you bear my child?”
What was she to say? To do? She forced herself to say calmly, “Perhaps sometimes in the future, Varrick.”
“Nay, we mustn’t wait. Men die in the flicker of an eyelid. It must be now.”
“I can’t, Varrick,” she said, still calm, now smiling at him. “I am pregnant with Cleve’s child.”
“You what?” Cleve stared down at her, too many memories running riot in his mind, unable to take in what she’d said.
He’d been kissing her, caressing her breasts when she’d told him, just blurted it out without adornment.
He just shook his head at her. He cupped her chin in his hand, which was difficult to manage since he was on top of her.
“Again, Chessa? Yet again you carry my child? I had believed we were well beyond your games by now. At least it isn’t Ragnor’s child this time. ”
“Listen to me, Cleve, and you’ll understand how clever I’ve been. Your father decided he wanted me to bed with him and bear his child.”
“He what?” Cleve smote his forehead with his palm, nearly falling on her.
“You wait until you’re making my eyes cross with pleasure and then you tell me that my father wants a babe by you?
He’s an old man, curse him. I’ll slit his damned throat for this.
He’s as perfidious as Ragnor, just smarter, but this wasn’t very smart.
He wants to bed you? I’ll kill him, Chessa, and you’ll not gainsay me. ”
“Nay, I won’t gainsay you, Cleve. But listen to me.
Varrick doesn’t really want me, he just believes with all his soul that a child we would produce would be the greatest magician ever to live.
He is old enough to be my father. When he wanted to speak to me, I looked at him and then at Argana and agreed that I’d go walking with my father-in-law.
I thought he would choke me, but he didn’t.
He had this on his mind, you see. No, when he told me that the child he and I would produce would be the sorcerer of the millennium, that was when I told him I couldn’t do it since it was your babe I carried in my womb.
I don’t know if you should kill him just yet. ”
Cleve lifted himself off her. His desire was like the cool ashes in the fire pit, banked for the night.
He sat on the edge of the bed, naked, his hands clasped between his knees.
“My father wants my wife. Aye, I knew that, but after you stopped him from killing Argana, I believed it over. He knew that all of us realized his motive, thus I believed you safe from him. But this. By all the gods, what am I to do? I should kill him. That would end it once and for all. Ah, but that would leave Argana and her sons alone as well as all his people.”