Enchantress Mine (61 page)

Josselin winced several times, but his humor was well intact. “Lady,” he teased, “stop, I pray you, before I forget you are about to bear a child this day.”

The lady Agatha, reentering the room, heard this remark and chuckled. It brought back so many memories, for she and her late husband often teased each other thusly. It was the sign of a happy marriage. “Here is some of what you need to begin, my dear,” she said to Mairin. “I will check the kettle on the hearth to see if the water is hot.”

“Sit down upon the bed,” Mairin commanded her spouse.

“I will assist you,” said Dagda, who crowded into the small room bringing the requested moss with him.

Mairin nodded, and the queen’s mother could tell immediately that they had worked in tandem before. She stood quietly to one side, knowing that if she was needed, Mairin would ask. Dagda handed a small basin to Josselin to hold. Mairin held her hands over the basin while Dagda poured wine over them. The big man whisked the first basin away to replace it with a second, this filled with boiling water. He handed his mistress a piece of clean cloth, and dipping the cloth in the boiling water, Mairin began to soak away the encrusted blood about the wound. She worked in silence for some minutes until finally the gash was clean. Dagda had three times replaced the hot water, which quickly became bloodied, with fresh water, and Mairin had used at least half a dozen cloths before she was satisfied. Although the heavy bleeding had ceased, the wound was fully open and oozing now. The water basin was replaced once again, and Dagda poured fresh, dark wine into the new receptacle. Handing Mairin a small clean sea sponge, he braced his lord’s shoulder as she disinfected the wound with the strong wine. Josselin winced but slightly.

“I must cauterize the gash,” Mairin told her husband. “If I do not, it could open again. You can’t lose any more blood.”

“Very well,” he said. He had had wounds cauterized before. It was not a pleasant prospect.

Dagda had placed a dagger on the grate over the fire in the hearth. Now, its blade glowing red, he removed it and carefully handed it to his mistress. She never hesitated. Pressing the blade over his wound, she successfully closed it. For a moment the little bedchamber was filled with the stench of burning flesh. Josselin gave a loud groan, and he swayed where he sat for the briefest moment, his eyes closing with his pain.

Mairin was very pale, and from the peculiar look on her face, the queen’s mother suspected that her labor had begun. She would say nothing, the lady Agatha suspected, until her husband’s wound was fully tended. She watched as Mairin tenderly packed the cauterized gash with cool moss, and then fussily rebandaged it, standing back to examine her handiwork. Satisfied, the young woman poured her husband a small goblet of the strong wine and handed it to him, but not before the lady Agatha had seen her put in the liquid a small pinch of powder from a tiny pouch that Dagda offered her. “It’s a painkiller,” Mairin said by way of explanation. “There’s juniper, wormwood, and tansy in it.” Then an open spasm of pain crossed her face.

“My lord de Combourg,” said the queen’s mother, “I think I must ask you to arise and give the bed back to your wife. She has been so concerned with your condition that she seems to have forgotten her own.”

“I am all right,” Mairin protested weakly.

He gulped the medicined wine she had handed him in a single swallow, and then standing, helped her back to the bed. “You have done more than your duty, lady,” he said quietly. “You are indeed your mother’s daughter. Eada will be proud when I tell her of your conduct.”

Mairin chuckled. “Aye, my lord, I am indeed my mother’s daughter, and she taught me well my duties as a wife.”

The lady Agatha could see this was some little joke between them, and so with Dagda, she busied herself cleaning up the evidence of Mairin’s doctoring. Then with the big man’s aid, she prepared the room for a birthing chamber. Although she had never had the help of a man in such a situation, Dagda did not seem out of place here. She could not help but be curious.

“Have you ever seen a child born?” she asked him.

“Aye, gracious lady, I have. I was present at my lady Mairin’s birth, and that of her little daughter, the lady Maude.”

How very curious, thought the lady Agatha, surprised to find his answer did not shock her. She nodded to no one in particular with approval as Dagda placed several plump pillows behind Mairin’s back, elevating her to a half-seated position. He certainly seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and seeing her obvious curiosity, Mairin said, “We have some time before us, my lady Agatha, and so I will explain Dagda’s position to you.”

The queen’s mother listened, fascinated, as Mairin unfolded the story of her background, and Dagda’s. She saw no reason to disbelieve Mairin, and the younger woman obviously spoke the truth, for her husband did not deny her words. Still, it was a story worthy of the bardic tales she had heard sung in the Great Hall of many a castle during her long lifetime. She could readily believe that the huge Irishman had slain hundreds in his time, and yet brought to God by the gentle monks, Dagda had become the keeper of that most fragile of life forms, a female child. It was a beautiful story, and she found herself touched and brought close to tears several times during its telling.

Mairin had paused several times in her recitation to breathe with a pain. Her labor was light, and remained so for the next several hours. She had sent the men off at one point to eat the main meal of the day in the Great Hall. She knew there would be a celebration in her husband’s honor, and she wanted him to be there. He would find it easier awaiting their son’s birth among the men of the court, she knew.

“Stay with him,” she ordered Dagda. “I will call you both when it is time.”

They had gone off, and Mairin had dozed for a bit. The queen and Christina had come to see how she fared. They had spoken for some time, Margaret telling Mairin of the combat. Josselin had been the perfect knight, fighting with honor and skill. Eric Longsword had been vicious and dishonorable, spewing a constant and vituperative stream of foul lies about Mairin and himself in hopes of rattling his opponent. Josselin, however, had closed his ears to Eric’s words, and slowly and steadily beaten the man back, leveling punishing blow after punishing blow upon the kidnapper of his wife until finally Eric had fallen to the ground and Josselin de Combourg, without a moment’s hesitation, had plunged his sword through his enemy’s hauberk, and straight into his heart.

“How was he wounded?” Mairin asked the queen.

“It was in the beginning,” said Margaret. “At first Eric fought silently against your lord, but when he found he could not easily disarm and defeat him, he began to speak his foulness. His first words started Josselin, and for a moment, his guard was down. It was then Eric struck his blow, but immediately Josselin recovered, and never again did he allow his opponent the advantage.

“Mairin, I hope you will not misunderstand, but I have given orders for Eric Longsword to be buried in hallowed ground. He was an evil and arrogant man, but he was shriven before the combat, and I must therefore consider that his was a Christian soul, and eligible for honorable burial. My conscience would not allow me to do otherwise.”

“Nay, Margaret, I hold no grudge against Eric Longsword. He was a tragic man, but he has paid for his crimes with his most precious possession, his life. Perhaps he will be happier in the next world than he was in this world. I shall pray for his poor soul.”

The queen smiled, pleased. “I knew that your heart was a good and a forgiving one, Mairin. Remember, when you return home to your beloved Aelfleah, that you will always have a friend in Margaret of Scotland.”

The queen departed with her sister, and Mairin dozed once more. When she awoke it was evening, and her labor began in earnest. For the next several hours she sweated and strained to bring forth the child from her pain-racked body. There was little the lady Agatha could do but offer Mairin encouragement, an occasional sip of wine, and wipe the beads of perspiration from her brow. Every now and then she would arise from her place at the laboring woman’s head, and check the infant’s progress. Finally, when she deemed the time right, she sent a serving maid for Josselin, who needed no encouragement to return to his wife’s side. Dagda returned with him, and together the two men waited in the little antechamber to be called to Mairin’s side. Finally, the lady Agatha stuck her head through the door between the rooms and said, “The child’s head and shoulders are born, my lord. If you would see your child’s first efforts at life, you must come now!”

The two men squeezed into the chamber, placing themselves one on either side of Mairin while the queen’s mother bent from the bed’s foot, and helped to ease the child from its mother’s body. Not quite fully born, the baby howled loudly, and even Mairin, in her final labor, smiled at the sound. Then giving a push, she expelled the infant out into the world.

“It is a boy!” the lady Agatha cried, holding the screaming and bloodied baby up for them to see. Then she put the child upon his happy mother’s belly. Mairin having quickly expelled the afterbirth, the older woman cut the cord that had bound mother and son, and swiftly cleaned her patient up while a smiling Dagda took the baby, and gently wiped the birthing blood from him with warm oil and a soft cloth.

Feeling useless, Josselin slipped from the room. He had barely looked at the baby, afraid of what he might see. Suddenly, all the old fears and doubts had returned to plague him. All the terrible and foul words that Eric Longsword had spat at him this afternoon before Josselin had finally killed him—words he had shut out of his conscious mind at the time for fear of losing his control and, ultimately, the battle with his enemy—now flooded back to torture him. He could almost hear Eric Longsword laughing at his plight from the fiery hell to which he had surely been consigned. Mocking him with the knowledge that it was his son, and not Josselin’s who would be called the de Combourg heir.

Weeks ago he had sworn to Mairin that he had believed her story that Eric Longsword had not raped her. That the child Mairin carried in her womb was his child. That he had no doubts, but God have mercy upon him, he did have doubts. Mairin was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Surely the most beautiful woman in the world, and no normal man having her in his possession, desiring her as Eric Longsword had desired her, could not have taken her fully and completely.

“My lord?” Dagda was at his elbow. “The lady Mairin would see you now.”

Slowly he went back into their bedchamber, and there was his beloved enchantress propped up against the pillows smiling proudly and radiantly, the swaddled baby settled within the crook of her arm. Pushing the damning thoughts into the dark reaches of his brain, he smiled back at her, and for the first time, gazed seriously upon the infant. Large round blue eyes stared back at him to his complete amazement. In a strange way, the child reminded him of little Maude, but for the blond fuzz that topped his head. Maude’s hair had been dark.

“Here is your son, my lord,” Mairin said quietly. “Here is William de Combourg. I swear upon the True Cross that he is your child. Will you recognize him as such?”

He knew he must answer in the affirmative, and yet he hesitated, and in that moment, the king entered the room with Margaret. Gratefully, he turned to greet the visitors, but not before he had seen the disbelief and hurt spring into Mairin’s eyes.

“Josselin, my friend,” said Malcolm Ceann Mor, “I have to tell you something that has been discovered while preparing the body of Eric Longsword for his burial. My wife has never doubted Mairin’s assurances that her captor never forced himself upon her, and for my Meg’s sake, I believed it also. Your wife did not lie, though I know there were those who did doubt her.

“When the body was stripped of its garments to be washed prior to preparing it for its burial, it was discovered that Eric Longsword had no genitals.”

“What?”
Josselin felt both relief and amazement pouring through him in equal amounts.

“The man had no genitals,” the king repeated. “Once he did, but he was obviously injured severely in some battle of the past few years. He used a reed to aid him in peeing, but as for his cock and balls, they have been long gone. There are terrible scars, but nothing else remains to attest to his manhood. I thought you would want to know. Now let me see this fine son you have had a hand in producing.”

Silently Mairin handed William to the king, and then she said, “I would consider it an honor if you and the queen would stand as godparents to
my
son. Will Father Turgot baptize William tonight?”

Margaret glanced at the new parents, and realizing that there was something very wrong, she quickly said, “Of course he will. Here, Malcolm, give me our godson. We will go immediately to the chapel, and see that young lord William is pronounced a good Christian before the hour is out.”

The room quickly emptied but for Mairin and Josselin. After a long silence broken only by the snapping of the dry apple wood in the fireplace, Mairin said quietly, “I will never forgive you, Josselin.”

“You must,” he said. “I cannot go on without you, enchantress. I tried to believe you! I wanted to believe you! I thought I did, but as I stood in the anteroom just a few minutes ago, all the terrible things that Eric Longsword said to me this afternoon came thundering back, and for the briefest moment, I admit to my doubt.”

“You would have continued to doubt me and to doubt William had the king not brought us the information that he did.”

“No!”
He denied it, feeling greater shame now than he had felt before, for he knew what she said was true.

“I will never forgive you, Josselin,” she repeated, and seeing the cold anger in her dark violet eyes, he found himself more afraid now than he had ever been in his entire life.