40. The Holy Punishment
XL
THE HOLY PUNISHMENT
The corridor blurred with torchlight as Seren followed the men carrying Erik’s unconscious body. His head sagged against Geoffrey’s arm; his blood trailed in dark drops along the floor. He had stood for her. Fought for her. Bled for her.
And now was this her divine consequence?
David kept close to her side, his voice growing firmer as he commanded, “Warm the chamber. Quickly.”
Margot hurried ahead to throw open the council chamber door while Isolde fanned the small flame in the hearth. Father Osbert whispered Scripture behind them, the words a rhythm meant to comfort, but each verse felt like a weight on Seren’s shoulders.
The guards lowered Erik onto the floor near the hearth and withdrew at David’s signal.
Erik remained unconscious.
Seren’s breath caught high in her chest.
“Please,” she whispered to God alone. “Not him. Not for this.”
Seren grabbed a fur-lined blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders before Margot could speak. David fetched another, layering it across his legs.
Erik remained still.
Geoffrey stood by the door watching as Father Osbert stood nearby reciting scriptures in a murmur.
Seren kneeled beside Erik, pressing her palms over his chest, then his neck, then the side of his face. His skin burned cold still.
“He’s freezing,” Seren said as Isolde fanned the hearth to blazing life.
At least Erik wasn’t feverish.
Margot touched Seren’s forearm, tugging at her sleeve with a hushed whisper to follow. “Milady, there are eyes here—”
“I am helping,” Seren said, breath shaky but sure. She gathered the blanket tighter around him, tucking it under his chin as if he might feel the difference.
Father Osbert murmured behind her.
David rubbed one leg, while Margot kneeled to rub the other. Isolde ran her hands over his arm.
Seren ignored the sting in her eyes. “Lord, don’t take him,” she breathed. “Not tonight. Not like this.”
Isolde placed her hand beside Seren’s on Erik’s chest. “He’ll live,” she promised softly. “Because you asked the Lord. You are favored.”
Seren nodded, but fear pressed at her ribs.
He had raced across a frozen kingdom for her, and now he lay dying because of it. She couldn’t escape the thought:
This was the Lord’s judgment because she was never truly favored by the divine.
She’d only twisted her prayers to save children from agony and now to kill a man.
She’d forced the Lord’s hand with her poison, and now she feared He might close it around the one she fell in love with when she was married to another.
She bent over Erik’s face as she rubbed his upper chest in short, hard strokes atop the blanket. “Don’t leave me,” she mouthed, hoping no one would hear.
Servants brought in more furs, and the vinegar and flax finally arrived.
Geoffrey shifted from the door and strode into the firelight.
Seren expected a lecture: that her husband was dead and she and her lord son were bent over a pagan trying to save his life. But instead, Geoffrey dropped to the floor between Isolde and David and used the flat of his forearm to rub the furs atop Erik’s stomach and chest.
For the first time in years, her healer’s mind—so clear in crisis—was nothing but ringing fog.
Erik’s breath was shallow, his skin mottled with cold.
She pressed her hand to his chest again, searching for something to do, anything to do—but nothing came.
She was a healer, and yet in the moment, she forgot everything she knew.
She glanced at David, who looked at her, wide-eyed. He’d forgotten what she’d taught him.
Finally, Geoffrey’s voice snapped through the haze, sharp as a commander’s:
“Bring warm wine. Hot stones wrapped in cloth. More furs. Move.”
Servants jolted, scattering to obey. Even David straightened.
Seren blinked hard. She knew those orders. She knew what to do. But her body refused to act—shock locked her still. Her pulse roared in her ears. She could only watch Erik’s chest rise in slow, uneven pulls, and keep to the same stroke, warming his chest and face.
The heat in the chamber slowly built—first from the hearth, then from the stones set beneath the blankets, then from the steaming wine brought in clay cups. Geoffrey tested Erik’s pulse, then his breath.
Time crawled.
Finally—Erik’s body eased. The shivering reappeared, then slowed. The strain in his jaw softened.
Geoffrey let out a low grunt, before muttering, “He’s returning.”
David nodded toward the bloodstains spreading through the blankets. “We need to close the wounds.”
Seren tried to thread the needle, but her fingers shook too hard. David gently took the needle from her.
“I’ll start,” he said. “Once your hands stop shaking, Mother, you may help.”
She nodded, ashamed, unable to stop the tremor in her chest.
Erik stirred then—eyes fluttering, voice slurred.
“Shield maidens… tending me?” His head rolled weakly toward Seren. “Am I in Valhalla?” His voice rasped and was almost indiscernible.
Despite everything, a soft laugh puffed out of David.
“If I tell Ragnar you called me a shield maiden,” David said, “he’ll have words with you.”
Erik tried to turn his head. He blinked, confused, trying to focus on David’s face.
“Ragnar . . .”
But whatever he was going to say never came.
He caught sight of Geoffrey by his side, binding a cut.
His voice rasped out: “Why . . . are you—?”
Geoffrey paused, linen pulled tight in hand. He met Erik’s gaze without rancor for the first time.
“Because milady once stitched my leg in secret after Lord Henry refused me a physician for speaking the truth in front of the bishops,” Geoffrey said. “She treats every wound as if the soul beneath it matters.”
He wrapped the linen around Erik’s arm, slow and steady.
“I hate you,” Geoffrey admitted. “For what you took from me. You are a pagan. A foreigner. Landless. Wifeless. Title-less. No birthright. A man I thought beneath us . . . Beneath me.”
His jaw tightened.
“But she corrected me tonight. Everyone bleeds. Everyone is a soul before the Lord.”
Erik’s breath trembled.
Seren stroked his brow, gently grounding him when his eyes drifted.
“You are still a pagan,” Geoffrey said, knotting the linen, “but you have my respect—as a warrior and as a fellow man.”
He sat back, wiping his hands.
“Get some rest, Montfort. You’ll have to earn back your rank one day.” He smirked faintly. “But that’s a problem for later.”
He rose, dipped his head to Seren, then to David. “You have my loyalty, Lord David. I’ll see your orders carried out for siege preparations.”
“Thank you,” Seren said softly. “For saving his life.”
Geoffrey snorted. “He taught me how to treat battle colds. I owe him for not allowing me to spill innocent blood and sparing my life in the process. And—” he paused at the door, glancing back, “I’ll give Ragnar leave when I see him. The boy will want to come.”
Erik’s eyes snapped open—raw, blurred, desperate.
“He’s… alive?” he rasped as Geoffrey left.
Seren nodded. Her throat tightened. “Forgive me for lying,” she whispered, touching his cheek. “It was the only way to keep him safe.”
Erik’s eyes closed again, tears slipping sideways into his hair. He mumbled something as Seren stroked his cheek.
Father Osbert stepped toward the door. “I must tend to Lord Henry,” he said. “Otherwise, rumors will spread. Call for me if he worsens.” He slipped out.
Margot and Isolde hovered, unsure.
“Go reheat the stones,” Seren said softly. “And bring more warmed wine.”
They left with quick curtsies.
The chamber hushed, leaving only the crackle of the hearth and the ragged sound of Erik’s breathing between Seren and David.
Seren placed a kiss on Erik’s cheek, close enough to graze his lips. David glanced her way. Shame simmered on her cheeks, but her son said nothing.
David finished with Erik’s side and moved to his other arm. He threaded the needle with practiced fingers, then eased Erik’s arm across his lap.
Erik winced. His eyes cracked open—barely slivers—but they found Seren first, then David. He tried to speak; only a rasp escaped.
“Easy,” David murmured. “This will sting.”
He cleaned the wound with vinegar. Erik hissed but didn’t pull away. His body shook from cold more than pain.
For several moments, David worked in silence. Then, so quietly Seren almost missed it, David whispered, “I always wished you were my father.”
Erik’s eyes fluttered, and his brow furrowed. He heard it.
David set the first stitch. The thread tugged tight.
“When I was little,” he continued, voice thin, “I thought . . . if you were married to her . . . Mother wouldn’t cry at night.”
Seren stared at her son, not realizing that was why he had asked her if she loved the Commander after Henry’s first attempt on her life.
Erik blinked slowly, the words seemingly piercing through his fog. His hand twitched.
David swallowed hard and kept stitching. He wiped his wrist across his eyes, his breath trembling once before he forced it down.
“Ragnar always spoke about you,” he said softly. “What you taught him. How he missed you—loved you. How you loved him. That you were a prisoner.”
Erik shut his eyes tightly at that—grief tearing through the haze. His jaw clenched. A low, broken sound escaped him.
Seren laid a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
“I used to envy him,” David admitted, voice dropped. “He had a father who cared.”
Another stitch.
“Mine only cared what I could do for him. If I was useful. If I obeyed. How good a man I made him look.” He swallowed. “Beat me. Beat my mother. Just because he could.”
Seren’s breath caught at the rawness in her son’s voice—so young, yet shaped by too much loss. She didn’t trust her voice not to tremble, not to spill everything she felt, so she kept silent and her hand on Erik’s shoulder.
David’s voice softened to a confession:
“I thought I’d be sad when my father died. I’m not. Maybe that makes me a terrible son, but . . . if you love my mother, and she loves you . . . I don’t care what anyone says.”
Erik’s eyes opened again with an unfocused gaze, but locked with Seren’s.
David tied off the stitch and whispered the words he’d held the longest:
“I’d be proud to call you father.”
Erik’s throat worked once. His lips parted.
“David . . . I—” he rasped, hoarse and uneven.
It was all he could manage, but David looked down quickly, hiding a trembling breath.
Seren stared into the windows of Erik’s soul.
If only it were that easy—that her son’s word allowed them to be together. But Erik was of a pagan faith and held no land or title. He was the object of the accusation made against her, and she was a noblewoman of birth with the promise of peace with marriage.
Oh, the scandals that would follow. She tried not to think of the future.
Had David been secure in his appointment of lordship—perhaps there might have been a chance, but as it stood—David had to prove he was a Marcher Lord to retain the blessing and appointment from the king.
Every heir was met with violence. There was always someone who tried to pry a new lord from his title.
And it might be her own people coming to claim the lordship—to fight back against Norman control of the Marches. But it was a problem for the morning when she met her father on the fields of Mortlande beyond Thornwyck’s gate.
David rested Erik’s arm across the warrior’s chest before replacing the blanket and furs.
“Please stay alive,” David whispered. “For my mother. For all of us.”
Erik let out a thin, pained breath that might’ve been a promise.
Seren pressed her hand over Erik’s heart, feeling it fight to keep time. In her heart, she prayed, “If You spare him, Lord, please do not waste what You’ve returned.”