Chapter Thirty-Six #5
“I know, sweet, but it will only be for a little longer,” he assured her. “After the babe is born, you can run your head off if it pleases you. Now, come upstairs and I shall read to you from Beowulf.”
“Nay,” she said petulantly, seeing his gaze turn hard and suddenly receiving a mental picture of herself slung over his shoulder as he carried her to bed. “I….I want to see my garden first. Please?”
He pursed his lips in frustration. “Blatant disobedience one moment and sweet pleading the next,” he grunted.
“Dustin, surely you are going to drive me right out of my mind. I shall be glad when this child is born if nothing else than to rid you of these mood swings. Well? If it is your garden you wish to see, then see it you will or else I shall never get you out of this hellish cold.”
She smiled sweetly at him and took his arm as he rolled his eyes at her with exasperation. “You are making me daft,” he murmured sternly.
“I love you, husband,” she said, laying her head on his arm affectionately.
Her garden was dead, as she knew it would be, but she took great delight in planning the flowers she was going to plant for spring.
Christopher listened, gave her his opinions when she asked, and spent the majority of his time watching her pace from plot to plot, explaining to him in great detail what she had in mind.
Now and again, he would glance to the sky above, for he could smell the rain and he knew they were in for a hell of a storm. He was eager to get his wife inside, but she was happier than he had seen her in weeks fluttering about in the dead garden, and so he allowed her a bit of freedom.
The cold had turned her beautiful face a healthy rosy shade and the pregnancy had filled her cheeks out, making her appear like a round little cherub.
Christopher was entranced by her glow, her beauty, and her spirit as she made her way back over to him, all smiles.
He held his arms out to her and she fell into him, still chatting happily about her flowers.
He hustled her up to their bedchamber, helping her with her cloak and heavy overdress she had put on.
The closer he came to view the true figure of his wife, the more he suddenly realized that Griselda was right; she was absolutely enormous and he felt a bolt of fear shoot through him.
She certainly could not go another six weeks.
He silently vowed to seek the old woman out when he left his wife, to begrudgingly comply with whatever she wanted to do with Dustin.
“Sit down,” he told her and she lowered herself onto the bed, holding up her feet so he could remove her boots.
It had been weeks since she had been able to put her own shoes on. This morning before she went outside, she had had to lie on her back on the bed and hold her legs up in the air so that she might struggle to pull her boots on.
“Now lie down, sweetheart,” he said, pulling the coverlet up around her. “I shall return in a moment with some mead and the book.”
“I have already read Beowulf,” she told him, unhappy.
“I see,” he blinked thoughtfully. “Have you read Song of Roland?”
She nodded. “The Iliad, too.”
He pretended to give her a stern, pondering look. “Hmm,” he rubbed his chin. “I see that I shall have to make up my own stories to keep you abed.”
Her eyes lit up. “Tell me of your adventures in the Holy Land.”
That will keep her busy for days, he thought as he sat on the bed next to her and drew her into the curve of his torso.
“So you want to hear of the Holy Land, do you?” he said thoughtfully. “Well, now, where shall I begin?”
“At the very beginning,” she insisted, cuddling up against him and waiting expectantly. “Tell me of when Richard first recruited you. Where were you serving?”
He obliged her. He’d barely gotten to the part where he was placed in command of a division before they sailed for Turkey when he felt Dustin go limp beside him.
When she began to snore, he smiled and wrapped his free arm around her, his mind relaxing from its remembrance, and his eyes drifting to the window where freezing rain was spattering the sill.
He eventually left Dustin sleeping in the early afternoon and went downstairs to partake of the nooning meal.
Even before he entered the great dining hall he could hear his sister’s bad temper as she turned her nose up at everything Gowen was offering her.
Deborah had such an even temper that it was surprising to hear her get upset at anything at all.
He and Gowen passed glances as he took his seat.
“Deborah, with all of that complaining, you are surely going to wake the dead,” Christopher told her as he reached for a well-done knuckle of beef.
Deborah turned a pouting face to him. “I am not complaining,” she insisted unhappily. “I simply do not like beef and Gowen is trying to force it down my throat.”
“You had better eat something, else that child will be born grossly underfed,” Christopher said sternly. “Griselda has warned you.”
“I know she has warned me,” Deborah snapped, immediately contrite. She forced herself to calm. “I am sorry, Chris, I try to eat, truly I do. But nothing appeals to me.”
“Then find something that does and eat only that,” Christopher said with a mouthful of beef. “Surely there is something that takes your fancy?”
“There is,” Gowen announced loudly. “She’d eat honeyed fruits all day long, the kind the cook makes with cinnamon and nutmeg.”
“Fine,” Christopher said decisively. “Then I shall order the cook to make platefuls of the stuff and Deborah can eat until she explodes.”
Deborah made a face, letting them know exactly what she thought of the both of them. Christopher snorted into his cup, wondering if all women turned into such banshees when they were with child. He never thought it possible of his mild-mannered sister.
David, Edward, Leeton, and most of the other knights save Jeffrey and Sir Nicholas entered the dining hall loudly, dropping weapons and armor and bellowing loudly for food and ale.
“Christ, shut up, would you?” Christopher waved at them irritably. “You make more noise than a heard of stampeding cattle.”
“Look who’s calling us loud,” Edward said, sniffing as he sat. “The man that bellows orders so loudly that Philip Augustus can hear him over in France. Ah, what is on the menu this day?”
The knights dug into their meal with the usual enthusiasm, licking fingers and throwing the bones to the floor. Harold and Alexander had a feast cleaning up their droppings. Outside, the weather worsened and they could hear the thunder deep into the dining hall.
“Jesus, this climate is terrible,” David exclaimed. “I would take the searing sands of Jerusalem over this mess.”
“This ‘mess,’ as you call it is nothing you have not dealt with before,” Christopher said dryly. “I think you are growing soft in your old age, little brother.”
David eyed his brother menacingly at the insult but said nothing because his mouth was too full. “Where’s Dustin?” he asked after he swallowed.
“Sleeping,” Christopher answered. “That’s all she does anymore. She’s almost stopped eating, too.”
“You see?” Deborah chimed in. “I am not the only one.”
Christopher was patient with her. “Aye, sweet, but you are not as far along as my wife,” he said. “Our child is already huge and grown and if she eats anymore, she will probably explode. Your babe needs nourishment yet.”
Properly put in her place, Deborah lowered her head and picked at her boiled vegetables.
The meal finished and the knights took the opportunity to enjoy some fine wine that Gowen had purchased in Gloucester.
David and Max announced it was too sweet and promptly deemed it a woman’s drink, but Edward thought it delightful.
Christopher raised his eyebrows at the lot of his boisterous knights, thinking to take some of the drink up to his wife when she awoke.
Jeffrey and Sir Nicholas burst in through the front doors with a violent slam, the elements howling and whistling around them. They looked like huge, mythical beasts in their soaked armor and tunics and the knights inside immediately yelled at them to close the doors.
“My lord!” Jeffrey ignored the demands of the others. “Raiders!”
The knights were up, bellowing for their armor, as Christopher rounded the table even as Darren was rushing at him.
“How many?” Christopher asked.
“A large party, as large as I have ever seen.” Jeffrey actually sounded concerned and that, in turn, concerned Christopher.
“Raiding for winter supplies, no less,” Christopher said as Darren competently pulled on his hauberk. “I was wondering how long it would be before we had trouble.”
“This winter promises to be fierce,” Jeffrey agreed. “The Welsh are panicking early.”
“Where will they go first?” Christopher asked as his breastplate was latched.
“Most likely the harvest stores at the edge of the village,” Jeffrey replied as David, fully armored, dashed past him outside and began shouting for the warhorses. “And the sheep. They love to target the sheep.”
“Waste no time, then.” Christopher motioned to his men, strapping on his sword. “They will not raid my village.”
As the knights blew out of the hall, Gowen and Deborah were left sitting at the massive table, flabbergasted with the speed in which the men had mobilized and moved out.
They looked at each other, a bit dazed, before Gowen picked up a honey-crystalized raisin and placed it in his wife’s mouth, smiling weakly.
The rain was fierce as the knights rode out of Lioncross with about fifty men-at-arms, armed to the teeth with crossbows and swords.
Christopher, too, carried a crossbow on the back of his saddle.
The raiders were not much for confrontations and he doubted he would have the chance to use his sword, so most of the defending would be done from a distance.