11. The Secret Savior
XI
THE SECRET SAVIOR
The keep’s great hall echoed with the clink of goblets and the clatter of servants’ boots, but none dared speak too loudly.
The nobles loitered around the high table, feigning ease.
Bishop Alaric from London had come to inspect the Marcher Lord’s affairs and to see if God truly favored the Lady de Thornwyck, as the rumors had spread about her prayers.
Commander de Montfort leaned against a tall column, watching the flames shift in the hearth.
It had been less than a month since his time with Seren in the garden.
She had asked his name. No one had asked that.
No one had ever said thank you for risking his life to save them, for losing his wife.
She had. She’d nearly cried at the injustice done to him.
It made him remember who he was. He was Erik Bjornsson, though the world called him Payen de Montfort, Lord Henry’s blade, his lord’s shadow.
He hadn’t lied to her. She was his only friend in the keep, perhaps since Astrid, and that was a dangerous feeling.
Erik hoped Seren had a boy for her sake and that she lived for the child’s.
He strained to hear a cry or silence as he remembered the last wife who’d borne Henry an heir.
The lord made sure she didn’t survive after the boy died.
Screams had rung down the same halls—pleading until they weren’t.
He had stood in the hall then, too—his fists clenched, his will to help had been leashed.
Henry had not allowed a priest. Had denied the midwife the herb. Watched her die to prove a point.
The same point he was trying to make now.
Seren might meet a similar fate. The thought of watching servants bury her twisted his gut. But this time, a bishop was staying in the keep. Henry couldn’t deny a priest or the herb to the midwife unless he wanted the bishop to report it to the King.
Henry descended the stairs slowly, deliberately, one hand cradling the newborn to his chest. Blood streaked the sleeve of his fine tunic. His expression was radiant and terrible in its triumph.
“I have a living son,” he announced to the room. “Born under the eye of God. Strong and whole.”
The gathered men erupted in applause. Bishop Alaric crossed his shoulders in blessing. Lords raised their goblets.
But Erik didn’t move.
He watched the blood on Henry’s sleeve. Was it the boy’s or Seren’s? She’d given him a living son; by his logic, with his last wife, Seren should be alive.
The baby boy squirmed beneath the cloth, letting out a loud cry. He was hungry. The child lived. But no one said whether she had.
He saw Margot racing down the stairs behind Henry, heading to the floors below. Worry etched her brow.
Seren was in trouble.
Likely, she was going to either the kitchen or the cellar’s herb storage.
He slipped into the chapel amid the gathering nobles pressing against Henry.
He’d be back as soon as he could. The old rickety priest stairs were in the back corner of the chapel, and he took them three at a time until he got to the store in the cellar.
Margot was already there and hadn’t heard him enter.
“No, no, no,” Margot murmured with heavy breaths.
She held a candle and was looking over the herb storage. “How can they all be gone? Oh please, Lord, let there be some left.”
He was taking a chance on Margot. Would she tell Henry that he cared for Henry’s wife?
Wanted to help her? He’d seen Margot care more for Seren than Isolde.
Maybe he could trust her. Seren’s life was at stake, but so was his son’s, if Margot told anyone.
And if she did, Seren might still be alive to save his son from torture.
He swallowed his fear and stepped forward.
“What are you looking for, Margot?”
She jumped, nearly screamed, but forced it down. “The Lady . . . she is bleeding . . . we cannot get it to stop. We need Yarrow or Shepherd’s Purse, but there is none.” She held the candle over the herb storage. Those two were empty as if someone had emptied them on purpose.
His jaw clenched.
Lord Henry wanted Seren dead, and this was how he was doing it with the bishop seated in the great hall. If Erik helped, he would risk his son’s life to go against the lord’s implicit wishes.
“We have nothing,” Margot said, her eyes darting to each chamber of herbs. “How can we have nothing?”
“Margot, listen to me,” Erik said in a hushed whisper. “You will say you found this.”
He pressed a bag of herbs into her palm—all that he carried on him. “Comfrey. It’s staunched worse in battle, but I don’t know if it’ll hold for childbirth.”
“Oh, Commander, this will save her life.”
“Margot,” he said, still holding her hand, squeezing slightly. His eyes pleaded as much as his words. “Do not mention my name to anyone. Please. I beg you . . . for the sake of my son.”
Margot looked at the bag of herbs in her hand and then back at him. The candlelight revealed the realization in her eyes.
“He wanted her to die,” she whispered.
Her eyes welled with tears.
“I swear it, Commander,” she said. “On my mother’s grave, Lord Henry will not know it was you who saved Lady de Thornwyck. I found this herb in the store, and it shall not be a lie.”
He nodded. “Then go before it’s too late.”
She ran up the main steps, and he went up the priest’s stairs. The spiral staircase went all the way to the top floor. He could check on Seren if he wanted, with everyone down, but maybe Father Osbert was still up there, given Seren’s condition.
He decided against the bold thought and returned to the great hall. His heart raced as the clamor hit full force. Had anyone seen him? Had anyone noticed he was gone?
The boy was crying, wanting his mother.
Henry was getting fed up with the boy. “I said silence,” Henry screamed, only causing the child to cry louder.
Bishop Alaric lifted his hand. “The boy needs his mother’s milk or that of a wet nurse if you hired such.”
“I hired one, but she is not due for a few weeks, as the birth was early,” Henry said.
"Well," the bishop replied quickly, "with Lady de Thornwyck being of Welsh blood, it’s likely she’s expected to nurse. Go—take your child to your wife, Lord Henry. We shall still be here when you return."
Erik wondered if Lord Henry would decline a bishop’s order.
The lord’s lips thinned and perched into a polite smile.
“Yes, Father,” Henry said through clenched teeth. “I shall do just that.” He held the screaming boy out. But rather than rise from his seat of honor, he turned, eyes seeking one man in the crowd.
Erik stepped forward before he could be summoned.
Henry would take whatever opportunity to reduce his favorite commander to a servant of his legacy—to remind all of them that they lived under his authority, especially after Bishop Alaric had toed the edge of it.
Henry smiled without warmth. “There you are, Commander de Montfort.”
Erik came forward and took the child, poor thing, lightly wrapped and pressed against his cold chain mail, which peeked out from beneath his surcoat.
The baby let out an ear-piercing scream.
“My son has good breath.” Henry laughed, prompting chuckles from the nobles. “Now take the child back to his mother. If she’s still breathing, perhaps she can do something useful and teach him silence,” Henry said and flicked his wrist. “Return here immediately after.”
“As you wish, Lord Henry,” Erik said with a curt nod and ascended the stairs with a screaming baby in tow. Once in the stairway, away from peering eyes, he shifted the child, rewrapped him, and let his little fingers scratch his beard.
“Be good to my son, Ragnar,” he whispered, holding the baby boy close. The warmth turned the baby’s cries to whimpers. “And pray your mother lives.”
Godric stood outside Seren’s doors. His eyes grew wide as Erik approached. “Where is Lord Henry?”
“With the men in the hall,” Erik said. “The boy is hungry, and the wet nurse has not yet come. The lord told me to deliver him to his mother and see that he is fed.”
Godric nodded, opened the door, and let Erik enter. The room reeked of blood and herbs. Father Osbert’s reciting stopped as all eyes, except the midwife’s, turned to behold him.
“Child is hungry,” Godric said, relaying the message.
Margot was cleaning the blood from the floor. Isolde wrung linens in silence. The hearth blazed.
Seren lay pale against the pillows, her eyes closed, her hands still. He refused to glance at her bare legs with the midwife between them. The bronze cross at her throat was dark with sweat and shadow. Her hair was uncovered, with long, loose curls splayed out behind her.
Seren looked half-alive—yet still as beautiful and youth-filled as the first day he saw her.
Before Father Osbert could object to his presence, the midwife told Erik to sit and hold the child until they finished with Seren.
So he sat in silence, holding the child with both hands, watching Seren’s chest rise and fall—slowly, stubbornly, like someone refusing to let go. Maybe that was why he admired her so much; she was a fighter and would remain so until the end.
But at Father Osbert’s glare, he looked away from his lord’s wife and found a single yellow bloom beneath the glass by her bedside.
She’d kept it, and his lips twitched. They meant something to her, too, though he wondered where the second one was.
Perhaps it had already faded, and he hoped it wasn’t an omen that Seren, too, would fade.
The baby screamed, so he stroked the boy’s cheek. His tiny little chest beat fast as he rooted for Erik’s finger. It reminded him of holding Ragnar as a baby. It was the proudest moment of his life, but Henry had tossed his son aside when he became too loud.
“There,” the midwife said and stood, and wiped her hands on her long robe. She adjusted Seren’s legs and covered her, as she announced, “Bleeding’s stopped, finally. The lady will likely live.”
She came and plucked the boy from Erik’s arms, causing him to cry again, and rolled him onto Seren’s chest.
Seren’s eyes fluttered open at the screaming weight dropped on her.
Erik wondered how long he could stay before someone told him to leave. He caught Margot glance at him, but she said nothing.
The baby latched, and the midwife shoved Seren’s hair back over her forehead. “Rest, milady. I will help you tonight, but you will need to gain your strength back to hold this one. He’s a big boy, given his early birth.”
Seren moaned before rolling her head back. That was the moment she caught Erik in sight. Her eyes widened, but then relaxed. A small smile came over her lips before she let out a relaxed exhale and closed her eyes again.
Her reaction to his presence carved a piece of his heart out for Seren. But with that, he glanced at Margot still scrubbing blood from the floors, hoping she would keep to her sworn word, for Ragnar’s sake.
In the silence, he saw the baby, red-faced, pressed against Seren's breast, and Seren’s pale lips parted in exhaustion. He thought of the way her eyes had softened when she saw him there in the room. And he knew, with a clarity he hadn’t had before:
Seren must live.
Because her son needed her—needed the mother, the parent, the love that Henry could never be or provide or had as a child. If she died, Erik feared what kind of man Seren’s son would become.
What kind of boy Ragnar might become, shaped by violence and fear.
“Commander de Montfort,” Father Osbert said, interrupting his thoughts. “You may leave now . . . unless Lord Henry gives further instructions?”
Erik stood and shook his head. “I was only to report that the child was eating, the mother is alive, and that she teaches him silence. And I see it has been done.” Then he left without another word or backward glance and returned to the great hall as commanded.
“Ah, there he is. I was about to send the servant boy to fetch you,” Lord Henry said with a chuckle. “How does the Lady de Thornwyck fare?”
“She is tired, weak, but alive and feeding your son while teaching him silence as you ordered,” Erik said.
Henry’s grin wavered, and he blinked a few times.
Erik suppressed his joy at witnessing Henry’s burn at the mention that Seren was alive.
“Well, very good,” Henry said with a too-wide smile. He rubbed his lip. “I suppose our Lady is favored by God, after all.”
Erik gave a curt nod, realizing that was why Henry wanted to remove her.
Seren was safe from his reach if she was favored by God in the eyes of the nobility and the people, and even the church’s highest order.
Maybe that was why he tried to mock her, but every prayer she prayed had been answered.
And Henry, by trying to disprove her, had called attention to that fact.
Her prayers were known throughout the surrounding villages and keeps, all the way to Norfolk in the East and the royal White Tower in London.
Seren wielded more power than she knew, and in Lord Henry’s world, women weren’t allowed to wield anything at all.