Chapter Twenty-seven Honesty
Chapter Twenty-seven
Honesty
“VICIOUS, VINDICTIVE BASTARD,” Aelfwyn muttered as she sponged Leofric’s bloodied back. “He didn’t need to hurt you this badly.”
Leofric gave a soft moan in reply.
He sat before the hearth in Cynn and Gytha’s hall, bent double in agony while Aelfwyn tended to his back.
“Here.” Gytha bustled up to them, a clay vile clutched in her hand. “The local herb wife swears by oil of lavender for wounds.”
Aelfwyn nodded, her lips set in a thin, hard line.
Behind them, Cynn nursed a cup of ale at the table.
Either side of Cynn, his four daughters—Ealhgyth, Hilla, Sifleda, and Merwyn—looked on with eyes as big as moons.
The two elder girls, Ealhgyth and Hilla, were auburn-haired and green-eyed like their mother, while the Sifleda and Merwyn—four and six winters respectively—had blonde hair and their father’s blue eyes.
Aelfwyn saw the worry on the girls’ faces and attempted to soften her features. She did not want to scare them. Still, her hands shook from anger as she took the vial from Gytha. Fury twisted her innards up in knots.
Her gaze returned to Leofric’s back, and she studied the bruises and lacerations that crisscrossed it. Eatta had been red-faced and sweating by the time he had finished the flogging. He had put all his force into each stroke of the rod.
Leofric had not cried out once during the punishment, although he ended up sagging against the pole in the end, and collapsed once the king’s men unshackled him. His back had glistened scarlet, and when he fell onto the ground, his blood soaked into the pristine snow.
The king stood over Leofric’s prone body for a few moments. Then, satisfied he had dealt with the woodcutter, he turned his back on him and strode back indoors. His retainers had followed him and slowly the gathered crowd dispersed.
Watching the king stride away, Aelfwyn had wished she were a man. She would have given anything to be able to come after Eatta with a spear and gore him like the pig he was.
Aelfwyn put aside her simmering outrage and used a soft cloth to gently apply the lavender oil to the wounds. Leofric hissed in pain, his body going rigid as she worked.
“I’m sorry this is hurting you,” she murmured, “but the oil should soothe the pain soon.”
“Thank you, Aelfwyn,” he finally managed, his voice strangled. “I’m well enough; it could have been worse.”
“Worse?” Aelfwyn drew herself up. “You’re lucky you can’t see the mess he’s made of your back!”
Leofric gave a soft laugh and then groaned as the movement hurt him.
“Lenred’s right,” Cynn piped up from behind them. “It could have been much worse. Lucky for you both that the town needs a woodcutter. The king held back this morning.”
Incensed, Aelfwyn turned on him. “He’ll bear scars for the rest of his life!”
“Aye, but they’ll be faint.” Cynn held her gaze. “Last year Eatta caught a man groping his wife. He flogged him so viciously that the warrior died three days later from loss of blood.”
Aelfwyn stared back at him, a chill passing through her. Seeing her look of horror, Cynn gave an apologetic shrug. “The king’s not a man lightly crossed,” he warned. “He is also greedy and territorial—for the past three years he has demanded a ‘gild’ from me for the mead hall.”
That caught Leofric’s attention. He glanced over his shoulder, his gaze narrowing as it met Cynn’s. “He’s taxing you?”
“Aye—and every year the price goes up.” Cynn’s usually good-tempered face creased in anger. “This year he’s demanding twenty shillings. If I don’t pay, he’ll turf us out.”
Aelfwyn listened to Cynn’s words and glanced over at where Gytha stood silently by the hearth. Her friend looked unusually subdued, and she did not blame her. Eatta risked the ruin of them all.
How quickly things could change. Her life at Bebbanburg had appeared a pleasant one until the night Ecgfrith visited her alcove. Now, once again, a king had cast a shadow over her life and threatened her fragile happiness.
She wished she had listened to Leofric at Winterfylleth. He had tried to convince her to leave here, but she had refused. Aelfwyn had thought only King Ecgfrith posed a danger to them, that Lincylene would provide a safe haven.
Too late she now realized there was no such thing.
“It’s still snowing.”
Leofric looked up from where he whittled a piece of wood in front of the hearth. “Aye, folk are saying this is the bitterest winter in years.”
Aelfwyn closed the window, shutting out the swirling blizzard, and huffed in frustration. “We’ll never get away from here at this rate.”
“As soon as the spring thaw arrives we will,” Leofric assured her. “Don’t fret—Ecgfrith won’t be able to reach us in this weather.”
“It’s not him that worries me,” Aelfwyn admitted, sitting down opposite Leofric and taking up the tunic she had been mending. “Eatta is a madman. I won’t be able to rest until we are out from under his shadow.”
Leofric smiled. He regarded Aelfwyn under slightly lowered lids. “He made his point. You heard Cynn—the town needs a woodcutter. It’s not in Eatta’s interest to kill me.”
Aelfwyn met his gaze, noting how handsome he looked in the firelight.
His auburn hair was starting to curl at the nape.
Seven days had passed since the flogging, and Leofric’s back was healing quickly.
However, the memory of watching him being beaten had left a scar upon Aelfwyn.
She could not let her guard down. “What if you offend him again?”
Leofric gave a soft laugh. “I’ll do my best not to.”
Aelfwyn glared at him. “Now you’re making fun.”
Leofric’s smile faded. He put aside the wood he was whittling and came to her.
He hunkered down next to Aelfwyn so their gazes were level and reached out for her hand.
The warmth and strength of his fingers closing around hers made Aelfwyn’s heart start to race.
They hardly ever touched; their only physical contact was when she dressed his back.
His closeness made it difficult to breathe.
“Making fun is the last thing I’d do,” he told her gently.
“Pride has ever been my downfall, Aelfwyn. It’s the reason Ealdorman Godwine banished me to Lindisfarena.
I’ve never suffered being told what to do—not by my father, overlord, or king.
If I’d asked Eatta’s permission before cutting down any of his trees, I could have avoided that flogging. ”
She stared back at him, drowning in the hazel-green depths of his eyes. “Can’t we just leave here and put all of this behind us?” she asked.
He reached out and brushed away a lock of hair from her face that had come free of its braid. His knuckles lightly grazed her cheek as he did so and she trembled. “We can and will—as soon as spring comes.”
She nodded, her mouth going dry. He was looking at her so intently that she felt stripped naked.
This look was different to any other he had given her; it was not the melting, seductive gaze of old.
Nor was it one full of teasing humor, as was common between them.
This look was so fierce that it took her breath away.
“I’ll protect you, Aelfwyn,” he finished softly, “with my body—and my life.”
Later that day, Leofric carried an iron pail of warm mash out to Windraes. The snow was still falling—thick flurries that obscured the surrounding landscape and narrowed Leofric’s world to the home he shared with Aelfwyn.
After their intense conversation earlier, it was a relief to go outdoors for a spell.
At least she had not flinched away from his touch.
She had not recoiled from his intensity, although she had not responded to it either.
He had caught her stealing glances at him afterward, her grey-blue gaze questioning.
No doubt she wondered what had come over him.
Truthfully he wondered that himself.
The humiliation of that morning in Market Square remained with him. The feel of cold wood against his naked chest, the sniggering and whispers of the watching crowd—and then the whistling of the rod before it hit him—still haunted his dreams.
The pain had been worse than he had anticipated.
He had nearly bitten through his lip as he forced himself not to cry out.
He did not want Aelfwyn to see him howl and beg for mercy like a coward.
It was bad enough he had seen her look of horror as she helped him off the bloodied snow.
Her face had been ashen and wet with tears, but her eyes were what still haunted him—the same bleakness he had seen on Lindisfarena when she had awoken.
Aelfwyn had already been through too much—and he had selfishly inflicted more suffering upon her.
Windraes greeted him with a soft whicker. He had stabled the gelding in a lean-to attached to the back of the hut. Knee-deep in straw the horse looked comfortable enough, although Leofric knew he missed being outdoors.
He sat the metal pail down and watched Windraes take huge mouthfuls of mash. Aelfwyn had added slices of carrot and apple to it as a special treat.
Leofric leaned against the gelding’s warm flank, feeling the scabs on his back pull slightly as he did so.
“It’ll be Yule soon, Windraes,” he said. The horse’s furry ears flicked back toward him, but he did not pause eating. “This time last year I was living under my father’s roof—without a care in the world.”
Windraes snorted into his bucket, and Leofric smiled. “Aye, it was a shallow existence I’ll admit—hunting, whoring, and drinking with my friends—but I was happy enough.”
The horse threw up his head, scattering mash, and stomped his left back leg, narrowly missing Leofric’s foot.
“Alright then … I wasn’t that happy,” Leofric admitted, shifting away from Windraes’s heavy hoof, “although I didn’t know it at the time.”
That was the truth of it.
The last few months had been the hardest of his life, the most humiliating. He had been stripped of everything—his family, his rank, his pride—but the gods had given him a gift in return: Aelfwyn.