She smiled sweetly at him, accepting his tender kiss before he quit the room and shut the door softly behind him. Cantia’s smile faded as she listened to his bootfalls fade down the stairs, thinking of the moment that lay ahead for him as he confronted the woman who humiliated and betrayed him, more than he could have ever imagined.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tevin stared hard at the woman, trying to see the young girl he had known so long ago. With the terrible aging and the progression of her disease, she looked like an old woman and she was only a little over thirty years of age. Life had been difficult for her, indeed.
Louisa regarded her husband, a very big man who had only grown more handsome over the years. She was quite astonished, actually. She had expected him to show up at some point, given her conversation with Lady Cantia, and she was prepared for his hatred and rage. Or, so she thought.
But Tevin did nothing more than stare at her for several moments, wondering how to start the conversation, when he finally gave up and simply shook his head.
“Long ago, I had imagined this moment and what I would say to you when the time came,” he said. “Now that the moment is upon me, I do not know where to start. I suppose I could say that the only reason you are here is because I love another woman. You are here because of her and her alone.”
Louisa had a difficult time understanding him, for she’d not spoken Middle English for quite some time. It was a confusing language.
“Me pardonner que mon anglais n’est pas très bon,” she said softly.
Forgive that my English is not very good. Tevin took the hint, as he was fluent in three different languages. In this time of travel and trade, it was necessary. Additionally, if one had borrowed troops, it was necessary to be able to command them in a language they could understand. He shifted to French.
“You are here because of Lady Cantia,” he said. “Do you comprehend?”
“Aye.”
“I understand you had a conversation with her earlier.”
“I did.”
“She told me what you said about everything, including Arabel,” he moved closer to the bed, his dark eyes intense. “Is this true?”
Louisa gazed up at the enormous knight, a man who was showing great restraint with his emotions. She could tell that he was struggling simply by his expression. Because she was so ill, she had no fear of the man. Death was coming for her, anyway. Tevin du Reims could not do anything more to her in that regard.
“I wish it was not,” she said softly. “You were kind to me, my lord, but I was too young and foolish to realize it. All I knew was that I loved a man not my husband, and I wanted to be with him. I was, and I became pregnant. If your lady told you everything, then you also know that I fled because I was afraid you would discover the child was not yours and you would kill me for it. Perhaps you intend to now. But I go to God with a clear conscience.”
Tevin listened to her quiet explanation, digesting it, before sighing heavily. Then, he shrugged.
“I cannot ask why you did it, because I know,” he said. “I cannot pretend that I am hurt by your betrayal, because I am not. I was humiliated, that is true, but only as a man whose wife leaves him for another man. There was no personal emotion involved. You left Arabel with me and that was all I cared about. Even as I look at you now, the only emotions I feel are those pertaining to Arabel.”
“I understand.”
“What happened to the knight? The one you said is her true father?”
Louisa drew in a breath, coughing slightly when her chest roweled. Tevin stood well back as the woman covered her cough with a vinegar soaked cloth.
“He left me for another woman,” she finally rasped. “I was seventeen years old. My father disowned me so I had no choice but to do what I could to survive.”
“You are a prostitute.”
Louisa simply nodded, closing her weary eyes. “Certainly not as I had planned for my life to happen,” she said, opening her eyes and fixing on him. “I heard a few years ago that Arabel’s father had been killed in a tavern fight. I also heard he had fathered several other children with different women. I suppose, in hindsight, I did not fall in love with a man of good character. But I was young… I did not know any better.”
Tevin simply nodded. In truth, he had heard everything he wanted to hear and there was not much more to say. But he wanted to make one thing very clear.
“Arabel has asked to meet you and I have agreed,” he said, his voice low. “Let me make it clear that you are not to tell her of your past indiscretions or of her true parentage. She does not need to know these things. Tell her of your family history, or of other meaningless things, but do not upset her with things she does not need to know. Do you comprehend?”
Louisa nodded weakly, but there was uncertainty to it. “She will want to know why I left,” she said. “What would you have me tell her?”
Tevin averted his gaze, thinking on what his daughter knew of her mother’s abandonment. “She believes you left because she was born crippled,” he said quietly. “Perhaps… perhaps you should allow her to believe that and simply tell her that you are sorry for it.”
“You would rather have her believe I abandoned her because she was deformed and not because she was her mother’s bastard?”
He looked at her sharply. “She has already been hurt by what she believes to be the truth,” he said. “If you tell her your real reasons, she will be hurt twice by your departure and betrayal. This I will not allow. No matter if she is truly not of my blood, I have raised her as my own and she is my daughter. I love her as much as I ever did and if you hurt her again, I swear to God that you shall not like my response. I am granting you the privilege of meeting this beautiful, young woman whom you gave birth to, who you are wholly unworthy of. Do not betray my good graces again.”
Louisa’s dark eyes were wide on him. After a moment, she simply nodded. “As you wish, my lord.”
“If you have to tell her something, make it tales of glory that will make her feel good about herself, not like a worthless cripple whose mother abandoned her at birth. If you must say something to her, give her something to dream.”
Louisa carefully regarded him. His words spoke of a very great love for Arabel, surprising when men were usually not the emotional sort. “I see you now as I saw you then. A man of great feeling,” she said. “That is a rare thing, my lord.”
Tevin’s response was to shoot her a look of impatience before he turned for the door. As he put his hand on the panel, Louisa’s soft voice stopped him.
“I am sorry, my lord,” she said with as much strength as she could muster. “Please know how sorry I am for what I did. I am sorry we did not have the life together you had planned for.”
Tevin looked at the woman. He couldn’t muster the pity for her that Cantia had. “I suspect you are only sorry because your life did not turn out as you had hoped,” he said frankly. “If you and your knight had lived a long and healthy life together, you would not be sorry in the least. You would consider Arabel and me a casualty of your decision and nothing more.”
As he left the shack, Louisa came to realize he was right. He was right about something else, too.
Perhaps she should give Arabel something to dream.
*
“Father, I do not want you to go in with me,” Arabel told Tevin as they crossed the bailey towards the smithy shacks. “I will speak to Lady Louisa alone.”
Tevin was carrying his daughter in his arms. Her latest statement had his brow furrowing.
“You cannot go in alone,” he said flatly.
“Why not?” Arabel demanded. “She cannot hurt me.”
“Nay, she cannot hurt you, but the fact remains that I will be there.”
“Why?”
“Because I will.”
“But she may be afraid to speak if you are there,” Arabel pointed out. “You are quite frightening when you want to be, Father.”
“I will go in with her,�
� Cantia said quietly, following the pair.
“Nay,” Tevin said firmly, glancing at his lady. “I will go in. You may accompany us if you wish, but know that I am not comfortable with it. I wish you would simply stay out.”
Cantia looked at him. “I am not going to stay out. If you go in, I go in.”
Tevin rolled his eyes. “Stubborn woman,” he muttered as they reached the shack. He stuck out a foot and pulled the door open. “Then stay close. If you get too close to her, I shall carry you out and spank you soundly.”
Cantia fought off a grin at the threat, lowering her head because she did not want Tevin to see her face. He was edgy enough as it was and she didn’t want to push him. Tevin was already moving into the dim, musty shack, keeping Arabel far from the figure lying in the shadows upon piles of fresh straw. He couldn’t set Arabel down because there were no chairs in the room, so he stood several feet away from the bed and cleared his throat softly.
“Louisa,” he said, his tone low as he deliberately left out “Lady”. “We have arrived. Are you awake?”
The figure on the musty mattress stirred slightly. Bits of chaff blew up in the air as she moved, settling upon the uneven floor. Several long moments passed before a faint voice began to speak.
“In the fall, the trees will turn shades of orange and gold, soft strokes of the colors of sunset that appear vibrant against the deep blue sky.” The voice from the bed was barely audible. “In the winter, the colors will disappear and the trees will be hidden by blankets of white snow, glistening and puffy pillows that look like clouds but melt to the touch. When I was a child, my brother and I used to run wild in the fields of shimmering snow that the old people would call Winter’s Tears. We would make shapes in the snow. Have you ever seen snow, Arabel?”
Arabel was listening intently, mesmerized by the first sound of her mother’s heavily accented French. It was a deep, raspy tone, not what she had imagined or expected.
“A few times,” she replied softly. “But it usually melts and turns to mud. It never stays very long.”
The vinegar-soaked rag came away from Louisa’s face as she gazed at her daughter, nestled in her father’s big arms. Arabel was several feet away but still, Louisa could see her delicate features. She was a beautiful woman, looking very much like her mother had at that age. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“In the spring, the show would melt and the streams would become great raging rivers,” she continued hoarsely. “Yellow flowers would wake up from the frozen soil and the mountains would be covered with them. In the summertime, those same mountains would be overrun with families of rabbits and the entire valley would come alive with hopping, fuzzy creatures, all of them eating those pretty yellow flowers and growing fat and happy.”
Arabel grinned at the visual description. “I like rabbits.”
Louisa did something very surprising, then. She lifted her head and, extremely laboriously, pushed herself up so that she was resting on one elbow. It was as close as she could come to actually sitting up, but for her child, for this beautiful, young woman, she would make the attempt. She didn’t want to speak to her lying down like a weakling. She wanted to show her daughter what she was made of.
“You come from strong and powerful people, Arabel,” she continued softly. “My father was called Maurice the Bold because he was firm and strong, and everyone both respected and feared him. My brother was called Kurt the Brave, and he was indeed a very brave man. He once saved many people from a sinking ship by charging his horse out into the river and using his long beard as a rope for the drowning to cling to. It is true!”
Arabel giggled at the story of the man with the rope-beard, bringing a grin to Louisa’s pale lips. “But the most respected and wise person in our family was my mother,” she said, warmth and reflection glistening in her dark eyes. “You are named for her, in fact. Her name was Arabel Edeline Johanna von Karmann von Hassenpflug and was a direct descendent of the Valkyrie Sigdrifa, who was one of the chief Valkyries. Do you know who they are?”
Arabel was enthralled with the story. She shook her head. “Nay.”
Louisa’s smile grew. “Valkyries are the goddesses that choose who may live or die in a battle,” she said, rather proudly. “They are in my blood. They are in your blood as well.”
Arabel’s eyes widened. “I am descended from gods?”
Louisa nodded. “Sigdrifa was known as the ‘victory maker’. She brought luck to all men in battle. Perhaps that is why your father is such a great warrior – he has you to protect him. That is why you were meant to stay with him, you know. You have protected your father all of these years.”
Arabel was astonished. She looked at her father, who was looking at Louisa with an odd sort of expression, something between disbelief and warmth. She had never seen that particular expression before. Rather speechless, she returned her attention to Louisa.
“But… but you left me,” she said, sounding as if she was almost embarrassed to voice her thoughts after what she had just been told. “Why did you leave?”
Louisa’s smile remained. “I never left you, Arabel,” she murmured. “I gave you over to your father so that you could protect him while I was called away. We are Valkyries, you and I, and we are needed everywhere. I came back when I could but soon, I will be called away again.”
Arabel cocked her head. “Where will you go?”
Louisa’s strength was failing her. She had exerted herself all that she could. Carefully, she lay back down on the stiff and crunchy mattress, gazing up at her only child. She sighed faintly.
“Where all Valkyries go,” she explained. “Walhalla. It is where all of the great warriors go when it is time for them to move on to another life. When it is time to die.”
Arabel thought on that a moment. “Will I go there, too, when I die? I thought I would go to heaven. That is what the priests say.”
Louisa could feel her life draining from her. Her arms and legs were growing very cold and she instinctively knew she was not long for this world. God had given her just enough time to reconcile with her child and now that it was done, there was no longer any reason for her to remain. It was time for her to go.
“Wherever you go, I shall see you there,” she promised. “But for now, you must stay and continue to protect your father. That is what you were meant for.”
She closed her eyes and faded off as Arabel, Tevin and Cantia watched. The hut grew excessively quiet, for not even the sounds of Louisa’s heavy breathing filled the stale air. It was Cantia who finally went over to the woman and felt her pulse, realizing she was gone. She looked at Tevin with big eyes, implying the worst, and he took the hint. As he turned to leave, Arabel stopped him.
“Is she dead?”
Tevin nodded faintly. “She is, sweetheart.”
He started to move again but she balked. “Please,” she begged her father, “I… I just want to touch her. Can I please touch her?”
Tevin realized he was fighting off tears. He wasn’t sure why, but he was. Perhaps it was because Louisa had done what he had asked and given Arabel a true sense of worth. Perhaps it was all fantasy, perhaps not. In any case, Arabel would forever remember the last words of her mother and cherish them. Louisa may have wronged both Tevin and Arabel once, but in the last few moments of her life, she made up for it. She gave Arabel the right to dream.
Silently, he took her over to her mother’s body. Arabel wanted to be put down but there was no place to sit her, so he ended up putting her on her spindly knees as she sat next to the bed. When Cantia tried to move close again, he held out a hand to her and had her keep her distance. In fact, he moved back as well, going to stand with Cantia by the door as Arabel sat beside her mother’s bed.
Arabel gazed at the face of the woman who gave birth to her, seeing her own features in the weathered reflection. Lifting a weak arm, she gently touched Louisa’s hand, her wrist, feeling her still-warm flesh beneath her touch. Then, she reached up and pulled the blanket off th
e woman’s head, revealing hair that had mostly fallen out. Louisa was almost completely bald. But Arabel gazed at the woman with some pity, some warmth, and stroked the sparse hair anyway. She was sad, but not terribly so. In fact, she felt rather comforted.
“If you are not in heaven when I get there, I will demand they take me to Walhalla,” she whispered. “I will tell them I am a Valkyrie and they will have to let me go. But until that time, I promise I will continue to protect my father. Thank you for leaving me behind to protect him. I am glad you did.”
Bending over, she kissed the woman’s wrist and covered her head back up with the blanket. Then she turned to Tevin, who was standing near the door with Cantia in his arms and tears in his eyes. Cantia had her head turned but Arabel could see that the woman was crying. She smiled at the emotional pair, having no real idea why they were so weepy.
“Do not be sad,” she said. “Look at her face. There is a smile on it. Do you think she was happy to have met me?”
Tevin blinked back his tears. “Of course she was,” he said hoarsely. “She was very honored.”
Arabel looked at the woman, somehow beautiful in death as she had not been in life. Her skinny fingers lingered on the woman’s hand. “Will we bury her in the cathedral now?” she asked. “She is your wife, after all. That makes her a countess.”
Tevin looked at Cantia, who was wiping the tears off her face. It was Cantia who answered.
“She will be buried with the greatest of honors, as the wife of the Earl of East Anglia,” she said softly. “But, more importantly, she was your mother. That affords her the greatest and most honorable funeral of all. Would you like that, sweetheart?”
Arabel nodded, lifting her arms to her father, who scooped her up off the floor. Thin arms wrapped around her father’s neck, she gazed at Cantia.
“Did you know your mother, Cantia?” she asked.
Lasses, Lords, and Lovers: A Medieval Romance Bundle Page 148