Tait threw his hands up, breaking away from Gustaf fists. “Settle yourself, my friend. You have every right to be saddened, but not angered with a man who has been naught but loyal to your family since he came here. Why such hatred for a man you have never met?”
Gustaf turned on his heels, removing himself from those around him. “Havelock, you best speak up now lest I tear this place apart looking for him!”
Tait looked at Havelock. “What is he talking about?”
Havelock rubbed the long stubble across his jaw, reluctant to expose what he knew. “Where is my son, Tait?”
Tait narrowed his eyes in confusion. “He is not here at the moment. He is with Mara journeying across Connacht—”
“Is he alone with her?”
Tait drew his face back, baffled by the line of questioning. “Nay. He is with Ottarr and our men. Mara was in need of a protective escort to see her father. He is on his deathbed. Why?”
Havelock glanced at Gustaf before coming clean. “Gunnar is not the man you think he is.”
A slow grin eased across Tait’s lips. He couldn’t help but think the two men were joking. Surely they were. “What do you mean Gunnar is not the man I think he is? What absurdities are you trying to pull over me?”
“He was one of the ten men who had killed Rælik, and if you say he was the first to come upon Nanna, then we have every reason to believe he may have killed her, too.”
Tait altered his bemused looks between Gustaf and Havelock, not knowing who was the craziest. He waited, thinking any moment one of the Northmen would crack and give in to the jest. But they didn’t. They simply stood there.
He scoffed. It was all he had to counter their ridiculous story. “You two have lost your minds. And you…” he specified, looking down his nose at Havelock. “God’s teeth, he is your son. How can you even think—”
“We have not the time for this, Tait,” Gustaf interrupted. “Mara is in grave danger. We have to get to her.”
Tait came at Gustaf now, taking his allegation with Gunnar personally. “What makes you so certain he did anything to Rælik? You left right after your father died, with not a word or a goodbye to anyone. You deserted your family. And yet you stand here, accusing my friend of something so monstrous, so…” His words and good sense disappeared. “At least Gunnar was here. Where were you when your family needed you most?”
By the time Tait had finished his last word, he found himself on his backside, his jaw hurting from Gustaf’s fist. He felt like it had been knocked clean off his face until he had no trouble standing and cursing. He got into Gustaf’s face, countless hands gripping his arms from behind. “The truth hurts, does it not? You may have walloped my chin straight into next summer, but I would wager you hurt more than I. Guilt is a crushing weight!”
Gustaf huffed through his clenched teeth. “The only guilt I have is not getting to Gunnar sooner. I have been away avenging my father for nearly half my life, hunting down every last cowardly bastard who took his. And Gunnar is the last man. I will carry out what I aimed to do so many years ago and if I have to go through you, I will.”
Tait shook his arms. “Release me!” He looked at Nevan whose grip he couldn’t shake. “Release. Me.”
Nevan slowly relinquished his hold. “Perhaps we need to hear Gustaf out. He seems very certain of himself.”
Havelock intervened now. “Tait, I know you feel betrayed.”
“Betrayed?” His mouth turned into a sneer. “Only by you. Not Gunnar.” He pointed his finger at both men. “He has been a steadfast friend to me since the day you left him here, Havelock. And I will not let you—either of you—accuse him of treachery. You all have sunk to level deeper than I care to go.”
“Tait.”
“I will not hear any more of it. Be off with you.”
“’Tis true,” a tiny voice emerged from the crowd. A boy’s voice. A voice so familiar yet so strange to Tait’s ears.
Tait whirled around, seeing Brondolf standing in the forefront, his body trembling, his breeches at his groin becoming dark, saturated. He stood there urinating uncontrollably, his face as white as sheep’s wool.
Lillemor fell to her knees in front of her son, embracing him, her tears of both happiness and sorrow spilling from her eyes.
Tait came to the lad, kneeling down as well. “Did you say something?”
Embarrassed, he clamped his mouth shut, his breathing erratic and swift.
Tait gripped him by his frail arms and tenderly turned him so he could look the boy in the eye. “Brondolf, you have to talk to me. You have to tell me what you know.”
Brondolf shook his head fanatically.
Tait tried again. “I know you are scared. But if Gunnar did something to Nanna, I need to know. Please. For the love of God, please speak again.”
Brondolf looked at his mother now, his eyes pleading for help.
“Son,” Lillemor encouraged. “’Tis all right. Gunnar is not here. He will not know what you say. Please, my son. Tell us what you know.”
Brondolf took many long breaths, his tears welling. Every one was held riveted with overwhelming anticipation, eager to hear what he had to say. Eager to hear the child’s voice again. And when everyone thought he’d refuse to verbalize his fears, Alfarinn and Lochlann joined him, giving him what he needed most. They stood on either side of him, standing together united.
“You can do it,” Lochlann said. “I know you can.”
Brondolf turned his head sharply to his other side, looking at Alfarinn. Alfarinn nodded and smiled.
He turned toward Tait now. And Tait noticed the difference in the boy. The strength he suddenly found with having his two friends beside him. He remembered his own two friends; Dægan and Eirik. The two who stood by him through thick and thin. Even when he had stolen his own father’s prize horse so he could strut like a proud cock in front of Thordia, only to fall off and break his arm, they never let him bear his burdens alone. For months, until he was able to use his limb, Dægan and Eirik had done his chores for him so his father would never find out. And now, as he waited patiently, he knew this trio of boys would be just as tight as they were.
Most probably from this day forth.
“I saw Gunnar,” Brondolf began, his lips quivering. “He was standing over grandmother…”
“Aye…”
“He had put a pillow over her face.” His tears escaped, trailing down his cheeks. “And he held it there for a long time. He knew not that I was watching.” He panicked. “I wanted to stop him. But I was afraid. I could not move. And then he saw me.”
Tait stared at the boy, his child-like story so grueling to hear, so hard to accept. Taking into account the hardships the boy went through to tell it, he knew the lad didn’t have it in him to make up such lies. Not this grand. Not this horrendous.
“Why did you not tell anyone?” Tait asked, his heart bleeding for the child. “Why did you keep this within you for so long?”
Brondolf lost his might, and he started to sob. “Gunnar said if I spoke one word, he would kill me and my mother both.”
One word.
The boy’s interpretation of Gunnar’s threat was taken literally, and how could he blame him? He had been but a three-year old child, scared, and hardly old enough to differentiate between an exaggerative statement and a threat. He had been frightened for his life and his mother’s. What child wouldn’t take it literally?
Tait’s heart split in two for the boy. All this time, all these years, Brondolf had kept his mouth shut, never speaking to anyone about anything. He had missed so much in his life. His innocence had been stolen from him. His childhood scarred and maimed. And this was his best friend’s son—Eirik’s helpless child—whom he should’ve have been protecting. Should have taken better care of. He should have seen through Gunnar’s deceit. Should have noticed the boy’s cry for help.
Tait grasped Brondolf in his arms, holding the boy tightly, giving him the love and affection he had not given him
in the past. With his embrace, he tried to make up for the lost time and all the things he had failed to do. But not even the tight hold Brondolf reciprocated was enough to make him feel better.
He was their chieftain. And he failed them all.
A long moan of pain reverberated from behind him. Tait wrenched his head around, his wife bending over at the waist, her arms wrapped around the bottom of her belly.
“Oooh, Tait…”
Tait ran to her, his heart about to jump from his chest. “What is it, Thordia?”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her mouth puckered as she tried to breathe through the pain. “I think the babe wants to join us today.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Tait paced the mead hall floor, his mind scattered between thoughts of his wife screaming in labor and Gunnar’s unbelievable duplicity. He was a wreck. Utterly unstable. Ready to pound his fist into any available face, anyone who’d remotely asked for it.
He was not alone, physically that is. Nevan, Havelock and Gustaf were in the mead hall with him, though they were staying their distance. He continued his incessant back and forth marching, keeping one ear on their conversation across the room—the strategy they were working out to get to Gunnar—while another was strapped to the distant cries of Thordia.
Another long, shrill scream broke through the thick wood walls of the mead hall and Tait growled. The only thing he could do at the moment.
“If this child does not come soon, I swear I am going to pull him out myself!”
“Well, I imagine the source of the problem is she has your stubbornness,” Nevan said. “We could be here for days waiting on her arrival.”
Tait halted his in his steps, his brow cocked. “She?”
“Aye. Only a daughter could make a father pace until his mind is gone. ‘Tis what they do best.”
Tait sighed and went back to his mindless to and fro strides, not caring for Nevan’s humor. It wasn’t that he was opposed to the thought of having a daughter. He was kind of hoping he'd have one. But he didn't like taking the brunt of the jest. Not any jest—especially this day.
“Come on,” Gustaf said as he got up from his chair. “Sit with us and let us plot.”
Tait’s feet paused midstep. “I cannot even think of plotting against Gunnar without—” He drilled his fist into his eye. “How could he do this? Why would he do this?” He charged toward Havelock. “He is your son! How could he be capable of killing Rælik and Nanna, and then befriend me as if he…as if…as if his very heart were made of stone? How can he live with himself?”
“When you arrive at that answer for Domaldr,” Havelock stated coolly. “I hope you will enlighten me as well.”
Tait hung his head, knowing Havelock was right. If Domaldr—Dægan’s own twin—could manage betraying his father and trying to kill every one of his people thereafter without a heavy mind, then why couldn’t Gunnar.
Because Gunnar had been so loyal to him, that’s why!
It was hard to admit he had been played. For seven long years he had been glibly deceived and never once did it occur to him. He closed his eyes, feeling like such a fool. Feeling like he had let everyone down—that he had let Dægan down.
That was the hardest of all.
To know he was left to protect and lead Dægan’s people with a deft mind, and all he did was harbor the enemy.
“I know you feel guilty for what Gunnar has done,” Havelock concluded. “But ‘tis more my fault than yours. I brought him here. I delivered him unto Rælik’s family. You could not have known any more than I. The only thing we can do now is stop him from carrying out his plan.”
“And what is his plan?”
Havelock sighed exasperatingly. “To rid every one who might know of his past evils. Nanna of course knew who killed her husband and he made sure she could not tell.”
Tait remembered his last words to Gunnar, his promise: I will grant you her hand in marriage…How could he do such a thing? How could he not see through the haze of Gunnar’s ruthless intentions and blindly offer the world to him? Especially whose hand was not his to grant in the first place. He glanced at Nevan. He had to come clean.
“I fear for Mara, Nevan. She is in more danger than you realize.” His eyes remained fixed on the king. “I promised her hand in marriage to Gunnar.”
Nevan’s eyes widened. “You what?”
“I was angry with you.”
Nevan breathed long and hard. “You had no right.”
Though the king didn’t actually say, “Mara is my daughter and I say who she can marry,” Tait heard those words loud and clear from the hardened glare set upon him.
“I know. I overstepped my bounds.”
Nevan came to his feet in a flash, invading Tait’s personal space. “You stabbed me in the back!” He left the mead hall and slammed the door behind him.
Tait squeezed his temples between his hands and tried to expunge the remaining pain in his troubled head, the two Northmen left to sit there, left to ponder what had happened. “All right, Havelock. So, Mara is our greatest concern, now. What if Gunnar sees Gustaf before we can get to her?”
“To my knowledge, Gunnar has no idea who has been avenging Rælik. If he knew, he would have gathered his own partisans and hunted Gustaf down long before this. As far as he knows, our arrival in Connacht, with such a grand number of men, will be due to your extreme interest in Mara’s safety. You had called upon me to aid you. I am certain, knowing the kind of chieftain you are, it would not be beyond you to do so. Am I correct?”
Tait looked at Havelock inquisitively. It was quite unfathomable to hear Havelock conspiring against his own son. But he knew why. Son or not, Gunnar was a traitor. And righting a wrong, for his old friend’s sake, was utmost important to his heavy heart—even if it meant handing over his son to Gustaf.
Tait looked at Gustaf now. “Are you truly going to be able to do this? Knowing the relationship Gunnar has with the man standing next to you.”
There was a scary determination flaring in Gustaf’s eyes. “’Tis not a question of whether I am going to. I have to. My father—and my dearest mother—deserve justice. I spent not my entire adult life hunting down those ten spineless men to walk away now. I will redeem my father’s name.”
“Father!” The mead hall door burst open and Alfarinn’s frantic voice pierced through the silence. “Mother needs you!”
Tait’s mouth instantly went dry and his chest began to constrict around him, tightening so severely it was hard to breathe. He didn’t like the sound of his son’s command, the tone of it inundated with urgency. Though he felt as if twenty men sat upon him, crushing him into the floor, he tore out of the room and ran to his longhouse.
****
Tait flung open his door. The sight of his servants rolling up the bloodied linens unsettled him. It was horrific to see the copious amount of blood left behind from the birth, but not as haunting as seeing his Thordia, drenched with the sweat from her efforts, lying still—lifeless—in the perimeter boxbed.
He staggered, his heart laboring in his chest. Whatever blood pumped through his veins now thickened, lagging in his body like sludge. His heart stilled by the notion of her ruin. It nearly killed him to think she had suffered so, and gave up the fight to bring his child into the world. Hot tears began to burn in his eyes. The agony of accepting her death cut like a knife in his heart.
“Tait,” Lillemor said softly.
He turned his head to the right, seeing her wrapping the baby in warm linens. He could hardly rejoice at the sight of his newly-birthed offspring, the innocence of its face, the tiny wonders of its clenched hands reaching out from beneath the swaddling cloth. All he could feel was the immense loss of his wife. The devastating hole she left in his soul.
“Tait. Thordia is all right. She is only sleeping.”
Tait nearly fell to his knees. He had never felt so much relief in all his life he almost screamed. He ran to her, his emotions bubbling beyond containment.
“Thordia,” he whispered as he knelt beside her. He brushed back the wet strands of hair from her face.
Thordia stirred amid his touch and dragged her eyelids open, a smile creeping across her red and worn out face. She murmured his name.
“Sh…” he consoled, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Sleep. I will be here when you awaken.”
He watched her brows furrow. “Nay,” she said under her breath. “Mara.”
Tait understood what his wife was trying to say. “Worry not. We will get to her.”
“Cannot.”
“Sh…in the morning we leave. You sleep. I will not leave your side.”
Thordia must have been content with his answer for she soon fell back into a deep slumber. And he was satisfied to watch her. To relish in the fact she was still with him. To praise God for allowing him this one small gift.
Small blessings…he remembered Dægan saying once. And he smiled.
“Tait, would you like to hold your daughter?” Lillemor asked, carrying the little bundle toward him.
“Daughter, aye?”
Lillemor smiled, hearing the nervous twitch in his voice. “Aye. But you will be a good father to her. I know it.”
Tait held his arms the way he thought he should, trying to remember how he had placed them around Alfarinn many years ago. He felt uncomfortable holding such a delicate thing as a fragile babe, but once Lillemor positioned her in his arms, it all came back to him. He cradled her tightly and gazed upon her petite round face.
He wanted to cry.
And that he did. Like a child, he sobbed as he held his precious daughter close. All he could think about was the pain and anguish Nevan must be going through knowing his own daughter was at the mercy of a cunning turncoat. All because of the one hasty decision he had made. He vowed never to be a rash, foolish man again.
His precious family’s safety depended on it.
****
The light of a new day dawned. Its brightness was only a hint of what could be had the dark clouds not gathered. Tait looked up into the sky from the doorway of his longhouse, assessing the weather and what it would bring for his upcoming journey.
The Emerald Isle Trilogy Boxed Set Page 61