26. The Fourth Child
XXVI
THE FOURTH CHILD
The fourth child was another daughter. Seren named her Elen, another Welsh name meaning light.
The chamber was dark save for the taper by her bedside. The flame trembled with the summer breeze that crept through the shutters.
Outside, Mortlande slept; within, the walls whispered.
Seren sat propped against her pillows, the linen at her back damp. Her body ached with the deep, quiet pain of childbirth’s phantom ghost. She had been left alone hours ago. Father Osbert had dismissed the midwives after they’d swaddled the child and ensured both mother and daughter’s health.
Henry had not come inside upon hearing “girl.”
The wet nurse was in the alcove with Margot and Isolde.
Elen lay against her chest. Her baby’s breath beat softly against Seren’s skin.
Seren traced the newborn’s cheek with one trembling finger, marveling at its fragility.
“You came into a cruel world, my little light,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse. “But you are mine, and that is enough.”
She shifted, wincing as she did, one hand pressing to her ribs where bruises still bloomed. They were fading now, yellow where they had once been blue, but the ache remained. Henry had called them lessons for her two boys.
First, the order was silence; then, no tears.
Each time he struck her, she saw their faces.
Ragnar’s jaw trembled while David’s lips pressed white.
The first time, David screamed and sobbed until his throat broke.
The second, he swallowed it down until the tears burned behind his eyes.
By the fifth, he stood stone-still, his little fists shaking.
Henry had smiled at that. “Good. Now they learn,” he’d said.
But Seren saw what he could not—that every lesson cost them something they would never get back. The innocence had gone from David’s eyes too soon. Ragnar’s too.
She had healed more slowly than she pretended. Each bruise took longer to fade, as though her body had learned not to trust peace. When she turned in bed, the stitches in her soul pulled tighter.
She looked down at Elen again. The baby’s eyes fluttered beneath her lashes, dreaming of nothing yet.
“I would be a better mother to you than I have been to them,” Seren murmured. “But I am so tired, little one. So tired of teaching strength when all I wish to teach is kindness, when all I want is peace.”
Her voice trembled, but she went on.
“Your brother still cries for me at night. He waits until the nurses sleep, and I go down to see him. Then he crawls into my arms as if he’s still small enough to be held and weeps silent tears.
I know he counts the marks on my skin and thinks each one is his fault. I tell him it’s his father’s, not his.”
A tear slipped from her cheek and fell onto Elen’s blanket. Seren brushed it away before it’s dark spreading blot could reach the child.
“You must never think love and pain are the same, my darling,” she whispered. “Your father would teach you fear. The world will teach you silence. But I will teach you gentleness along with your siblings, even if it kills me.”
She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. The candle burned low. The wax pooled at its base.
Elen shifted, a small sigh escaping between two precious lips.
Seren pressed a thin smile through her tears.
“Sleep, my little light,” she whispered. “The day will come when I can no longer hold you. But until then, I will make the dark gentle for you.”
As if testing what she’d just promised, the candle guttered out, and the room fell into shadow.
Seren smoothed Elen’s silky newborn hair as her own thoughts drifted to the boys she could not save from Henry’s lessons—and to the man who had tried to save them all and could not.
Since Ragnar was no longer in the attic, Erik, too, had moved to the barracks to be near his son.
The kingcups came less often, usually one sneaked to her through Ragnar during his lessons in the Chapel.
She missed his presence at the other end of the hall, but it was for the better. It always was. Yet, in his absence, her affection deepened, even as she scolded herself each time she longed for his embrace.
“Be good, Erik,” she murmured into the dark as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Henry would make him execute her eventually when she was of no more use—she knew it deep in her soul—and she hoped he would do it. Refusing would only mean a horrible death for Ragnar, too.
She could feel it drawing closer, especially as she held a third daughter. And she hoped that when that day came, it at least wouldn’t be in front of her children.
“You cannot save me, Erik,” she whispered, “but perhaps you can save them.”
She wiped her tears, but they streamed anyway.