Chapter Seventeen #2
Courtly sighed heavily, with great relief. “God be praised,” she murmured. “Aunt Ellice thought that my father was going to try to kill you because he found out that I had fled the escort assigned to take me to Trelystan.”
Maximus gazed seriously at her. “How did he discover this?”
“A soldier assigned to the escort returned to tell him that I escaped,” she replied.
“He also told my father about the de Shera men who had intercepted the escort and tried to take me away. My father could only assume that I had escaped to run off to you and Auntie thought that he planned to kill you because of it.”
It was essentially what the messenger had told him.
Maximus peeled back his mail hood, revealing wet, sweaty hair beneath.
He seemed so weary, so very weary, as he grasped Courtly gently and began to pull her towards the stairs.
He wanted to take her to their chamber to inform her of her father’s death.
He didn’t want to tell her here for all to see where her grief would be public.
But as he pulled her towards the stairs, he happened to see a man he recognized sitting at one of the tables.
The man was a soldier he had left behind at Isenhall.
He knew the man very well. He came to a startled halt.
“Why is Chambers here?” he asked, pointing at the man. He looked at his wife, his brow knitted with both curiosity and foreboding. “When did he come?”
Courtly looked at the Isenhall messenger, who had spied Maximus long before Maximus spied him. The man stood up, moving towards Maximus and speaking before Courtly could answer.
“My lord,” the messenger said, appearing rather strained. “The majordomo sent me. He wants me to tell you that your mother, the Lady Honey de Shera, has passed away. He begs you and your brothers to come home immediately.”
Maximus stared at the man, unable to react to the shocking news.
Gallus, standing with Jeniver several feet away, had also heard him, as had Tiberius, who was on the stairs, heading up to a bedchamber because he was so exhausted.
But the messenger’s trembling words had all three brothers frozen in time and space, unmoving as they processed what they had been told.
In fact, it seemed as if the entire room had come to a halt, the messenger’s terrible words hanging in the air as the Lords of Thunder were informed that their beloved mother had finally passed away.
Months of illness and weeks of anxiety and worry had now come to a close whether or not they were willing to accept it.
It was final, as only death could be. As the brothers continued to stand, paralyzed with shock, Gallus was the first one to move.
The look of grief on his features was indescribable as he made his way, haltingly, to the messenger.
“When?” he asked hoarsely.
The messenger, too, was wrought with sorrow because everyone at Isenhall knew what Honey meant to her sons. The woman had been so ill for so long but had lasted longer than she probably should have.
“Seven days ago, my lord,” he replied. “It has taken me five days to reach Oxford. I only arrived yesterday. I came as soon as I could.”
Gallus stared at the man, digesting his words. “Was…?” he began, choked, and started again. “Was her passing peaceful?”
The messenger nodded. “She died in her sleep, my lord,” he replied.
“She had awoken, briefly, the night before to ask that your daughters be placed in bed with her. Then she went back to sleep and never awoke. She was not alone, my lord. Lady Violet and Lady Lily were with her. She was comforted with her grandchildren.”
Gallus’ eyes filled with a flood of tears.
He sat, heavily, in the nearest chair and Jeniver rushed to him, wrapping her arms around his head and neck, holding him to her breast as he wept.
Maximus was still rooted to the spot, his gaze on the messenger as if unable to move or speak at all.
Courtly was gravely concerned for him but she was distracted when Tiberius, as the news hit him, sat down on the steps leading up to the second floor and openly wept.
The Lords of Thunder were crumbling before her very eyes.
“Max?” she whispered, clutching his hand. “Will you at least sit down? Please sit, my love. Sit down a moment.”
Maximus was in shock. His mind was a black, roiling void with only thoughts of his mother filling it.
He saw her when he was young, a beautiful woman with a brilliant smile, and he saw her as she took a willow switch after him and Gallus when they had stolen their father’s coins.
He saw her holding Tiberius as an infant and then comforting Maximus when he’d been ill with an infection in his chest. So many memories were rolling through his mind and not one of them bad.
Everything was joyous. But upon those joyful memories came darker thoughts, those of Kellen de Lara and the man’s attempts to kill him.
The man who had given Courtly life had tried to take his, and Maximus began speaking before he even truly thought about what he said.
“Your father tried to kill me,” he said to Courtly, looking down at her with a rather perplexed expression on his face.
“I had been trying to avoid your father since we arrived at Wallingford but the man sought me out in battle and tried to put in arrow in my back. Bose de Moray killed your father as your father was making an attempt to kill me. De Moray saved my life.”
Courtly gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in shock and grief, and the tears began to flow with a vengeance.
It was then, and only then, that Maximus snapped out of his trance and realized what he had done.
He’d spoken before he really thought about what he was going to say.
It just all came tumbling out, his common sense overwhelmed by the news of his mother’s passing.
So much death. As a warrior, he was conditioned to accept death but not when it struck this close to home.
He was simply having difficulty processing it.
“I am sorry, love,” he said, reaching out and grasping Courtly, his manner deeply apologetic.
“I should not have been so blunt. I wanted to tell you in a much more gentle fashion… forgive me, please. I fear that news of my mother’s death has upset my balance.
I did not even realize what I was saying until it was too late. ”
Courtly was sobbing deeply as Maximus tried to comfort her. “Auntie said he was going to do it,” she wept. “Damn the man for trying. Damn him for his foolishness. What did he think would happen if he failed? He tried to kill you but he was killed instead.”
Maximus didn’t know what to say to her. He was feeling particularly horrible at the moment, comforting his wife over the death of her father which, somehow, helped his own sense of grief.
It distracted him by having someone else to worry about.
Looking around the room, he could see Tiberius sitting by himself, weeping, and Gallus seated on a chair with Jeniver holding him tightly to her bosom.
They were all stricken with sorrow, weeping for mothers and fathers, weeping for those they loved.
With a heavy heart, and struggling to remain strong for his wife, Maximus pulled her over to the table where Gallus was sitting.
Setting her down carefully, he then went over to Tiberius and pulled the man up from the stairs and led him over to the table as well.
Everyone was so terribly shattered, but in that crisis of grief and strife, Maximus was strangely level-headed, if only to be strong for Courtly.
Maximus stood between his wife and Tiberius, his hand on his brother’s shoulder and his other arm around his wife.
He caught Jeniver’s eye as she looked up from Gallus, and he smiled weakly at the woman.
All the while, words his mother had once spoken to him, words he had once relayed to Courtly, kept rolling through his mind.
Now, more than ever, they seemed particularly appropriate.
“Do you remember what Mother would say when we expressed the fears for our father’s safety when he would ride off to battle?
” he asked quietly. “Gal? Ty? Honey would say that we cannot know what will come at the day’s end but that whatever it is, it will indeed come, and then the end will be known.
If we saw Father again at the end of that day, then we would smile and embrace him, but if not, then we would not dwell on his ending but on his parting well-made.
What did we say to Honey the last time we spoke her? Do you recall?”