Chapter Nine
Arne woke to virtual darkness. There was only a small red glow from the fire.
He should rouse himself and put more wood on it so the shieling didn’t grow any colder.
He was glad of the warmth from the blankets, but he ached all over from lying on the hard-packed dirt floor and moving was becoming a necessity.
A child’s snore from the bed reminded him of the promise he had made last night.
It was one he would happily keep. The boy was only a child, innocent as yet of the sins of his parents or his people.
Nor did Arne regret promising to keep Gemma safe.
Any mother should have the chance to watch her child grow up, but life did not always provide those chances.
If he could ensure it, then he would. Although he still hadn’t got over his anger with her.
She might have died yesterday. If she was being truthful and she had left Kirkjaster with no plan of where to stay, then she had deliberately put her son at risk by leaving so suddenly.
But why had she gone north? Kirkjaster lay on a peninsula and, without a boat, north was the only way to leave it, but she had continued north well past the point where she could have headed east towards Car Cadell where Aoife’s cousin Lord Cenydd would have surely taken her in, and further east of Car Cadell lay her brother’s royal residence.
Where had she thought she was going? She already had a home; two, in fact. Caelin’s own lands south of the river, and the king’s residence in Perthawc. She had chosen neither. Yes, returning to her brother might be dangerous, but dying here with nothing was as much of a possibility.
After the way she had talked to him last night, he had started to believe she was telling the truth.
She had sounded so desperate. She must be to feel she needed to beg one of her enemies for help.
He let out a breath, knowing his anger should be aimed at himself as much as her.
If what she said was true, she’d left to try and protect Kirkjaster.
And it had been him that had made her feel like she was endangering it —even if Rhiannon’s comments had clearly been the final straw.
He had seen no sign of her mixing with anyone in the village except for Aoife and Rhiannon. She had set her sights on no man in the four months she had lived there, despite continuing to live a life not so different from her privileged one before. The only thing he had ever seen her do was sewing.
She saw he was treating her as if she were Ingrid, but realised she didn’t understand why he saw similarities between them—and there was his biggest problem. No one would understand that. No one else knew what he did about Ingrid. And no one must ever find out.
He pushed himself up from the floor, shivering when the blankets fell around his waist. His shirt was not enough to keep him warm in the cold before dawn. He stood and reached for his kirtle and leathers, then pulled them on.
After he had put more wood on the fire and persuaded it back to life, he opened the door.
The world around the shieling was white and silent—the silence only found in a world of freshly fallen snow.
Even now, before dawn, the landscape glowed with its own inner light as the snow continued to fall.
It was almost knee-deep already. They would not be going anywhere today, and he would need to add to Gemma’s meagre supplies by hunting.
Before he washed in preparation for the day ahead, he would ensure they had food and wood to last them.
Dusk and dawn were the best times to find deer, so the sooner he went out, the better. He put on his boots and leathers, and stepped outside, smiling at the sound of his feet crunching in the crisp snow. He closed the door and debated whether to bar it or not. It would be safer, he decided.
Gemma and Caelin couldn’t come hunting with him.
Neither would he leave them unprotected, so he opened the door and stuck his largest knife into the dirt floor near the door where she would see it when she woke.
He banked the fire and closed the door behind him, then slid the wooden bar into place so the shieling would appear uninhabited.
Nor would she be able to let anyone else inside while he was gone.
Then he assessed the surrounding area for hunting.
Around the edge of the woodlands would give him the best balance of visibility in the pre-dawn light and a clear line of sight for throwing his axe.
When he had left yesterday, he had not thought he would be required to hunt for food, and so he had not brought a bow with him.
Axes were messy ways to hunt for deer, but he didn’t have a choice.
He found a vantage point behind some boulders and settled down to wait.
It was not long before he heard the sounds of a herd drawing closer.
He waited until he had his eye on one particular creature, an older male trailing a little behind.
Then he threw. His axe hit its target, and the deer fell while the rest of the herd scattered into the woods.
He pushed himself to his feet and hurried over.
The deer was already dead, so he lifted it and hung it from a tree branch.
Then he set about draining the blood and preparing it enough so he could carry it to the shieling to butcher.
When it was ready, he slung it over his shoulders and carried it back to the shieling.
His leathers would definitely need a good wash after this.
As he approached the shieling, the door rattled, and someone pounded on it from the inside. He knocked sharply as he lifted the bar, but didn’t open the door yet. He didn’t want Gemma attacking him with his own knife.
“Gemma, stop. It’s me.”
The pounding stopped, but there was no other response.
He let the carcass slide from his shoulders to the ground and placed it beside the door.
When he opened it he thought at first they weren’t there.
It took a moment to pick her out in the dim light of the fire, huddling in the farthest corner, her arms around her son.
She was breathing heavily, and her hands were streaked with blood.
“What is it? What happened?”
She shrank back and didn’t answer, burying her face in her son’s hair. Caelin put a hand on his mother’s shoulder and patted her a little awkwardly. The gesture was heart-wrenching.
“We were trying to get out,” Caelin said. “In case someone came who wanted to hurt us.”
“I barred the door to keep you safe.”
Gemma gave a choked sob. He wanted to reach for her, to reassure her, but he didn’t. He had no right to, especially when his actions had caused her distress.
“Mama said bad things happen to prisoners,” Caelin said, his fingers clenching. He didn’t look at Arne as he spoke.
Arne frowned. “You are not my prisoners.” He pulled the knife from where he had left it in the dirt near the door. “Would I have left you my knife if you were my prisoners?”
Gemma lifted her head. Her face was streaked with tears and she was visibly trembling. Her arms were tight around Caelin, and now there was anger was growing in her expression. “I thought it was a threat.”
“A threat? Should I have left you with nothing in an open shieling, so any passing stranger could have come in and attacked you?”
“We couldn’t get out. If someone had come, we couldn’t have escaped but they could have got in.” Her sobs had stopped, replaced by tension and anger.
“By the time they were opening the door, you wouldn’t have been able to escape, anyway.”
“We would at least have had a chance.”
“You didn’t even know it was me coming back to the door just now. What warning would you have got? Should I have left the door open?”
“You should have woken me. Told me.”
Her words were true. He couldn’t deny that, but he hadn’t done so.
“I should have,” he finally said.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, although the misery on her face implied that she already thought she knew the answer—that he didn’t trust her not to run away or to let someone else in.
He didn’t know how to tell her that wasn’t what had been foremost in his thoughts, but he had already apologised. He wasn’t doing anything more.
Caelin pushed away from her, despite or oblivious to the tension. “I am hungry. Did you catch something?”
“A deer. Once I butcher it, I would be grateful if you would cook it, Gemma. Everything will seem better when we are no longer hungry.”
Gemma nodded but stayed silent and he decided his presence inside was only making the situation worse.
Outside, as he gutted and butchered the deer, he began to calm down. For a while he heard nothing, then gradually he heard Caelin’s soft voice and finally Gemma’s.
Why did he feel guilty about imprisoning them? It hadn’t been his intention. Hadn’t he only been trying to help, trying to keep them safe?
The body heat leached slowly from the deer and he shivered despite having been working.
He looked up at the sky and sighed. The sun had risen although it remained obscured by thick white clouds.
There was more snow on the way. A lot more, if his judgment was correct.
Not only would they be staying here tonight, but they might not even get to leave the following morning.
In a country where it rained so often, why had it chosen today to snow?
At least they had shelter here, and now fresh meat, which would last them a while.
The butchering finished, he stood up and stretched. He separated out the meat into a smaller portion for cooking that day, and the rest he would wrap in cloths from the shieling and place in the snow nearby to freeze.
He opened the door and stuck his head inside, trying to avoid getting blood in the shieling.
“Gemma, pass me a bowl for the raw meat and some waxed cloths to wrap the rest to store it.”
As he waited for her to bring the items, a few flakes of snow began to fall.