As if God had not thought their family punished enough, he had taken the baby growing in her belly. The only bright spot in that whole time was that Grim would live on in their child, but that had been taken from them, too. She had lost them both and it was Sigurd’s fault.
Annis had hated him ever since. That hatred had given him an almost mythical aura. So much so that when she had finally laid eyes on him in Maerr, she had been surprised to find him a mere man. He had been tall and broad like Rurik, except his hair had been lighter and touched with grey. Though lean, he had gone a bit soft as older men were wont to do. He had not been the wrathful devil of her nightmares. In fact, he had been a proud father that day.
Thankfully, Rurik stayed silent, while his eyes seemed to see all. Finally, when she thought he would move on, question the why or how of Wilfrid’s involvement in the Maerr massacre, he said, ‘There is more.’
He leaned forward as if to get a better look at her in the meagre light. The result was that she could finally see his eyes. The pure blue stood out in the golden light of the candle. His gaze stripped her bare to her very soul, taking in the whole of her stricken face and demanding she hold nothing back. Anger flared within her again. How dare he make demands of her? Yet, just as quickly she found herself telling him.
‘I was with child when they brought Grim home.’ If he could understand her pain, then perhaps he would understand that both of their families had suffered. Perhaps that suffering could lead to peace. ‘I tended to him day and night, hoping... Still he hung on, clinging to life. Perhaps I sat by his bedside too long... I do not know. I only know that I lost the baby...a boy.’
It was that loss that woke her from her sleep at night. It was that loss she remembered every spring when her boy would have been another year older.
‘I am sorry for your loss.’ Rurik let out a long-held breath as his hand came up to slide over the top of his head and settle on the back of his neck. He sounded as if he meant it, so she gave him a tiny nod of acknowledgement. The fact that he had recognised her loss was more than she had expected from him.
‘I suppose that brings us to why Wilfrid hated my father so much. But how did he know to come for the wedding? How was it all co-ordinated so well?’ His fingers made a steeple under his chin as he stared into the flickering candlelight, as if the answer could be found there.
He asked her these things as if she knew that Sigurd had been killed during a wedding. Perhaps he assumed that Wilfrid had shared the information with her. She let him have his assumption.
‘Some of the men who went with Wilfrid to confront Sigurd the first time were not his warriors. They were mercenaries for hire. After the failure, they fled. Perhaps they were afraid to get caught up in the fight should Sigurd pursue Wilfrid and Grim home. I do not know their intentions or their thoughts. I only know that I thought I would never see them again. That they would never dare to set foot in Glannoventa again. But I was wrong.
‘Two summers back, they came to Wilfrid, claiming to know of a way to get to Sigurd. It seemed that his son was getting married and everyone was invited. The guard in Maerr would be lax. There would be no better time to gain access to its King.’
She had not been present for that meeting because Wilfrid had wanted to take it privately. Even Cedric had not been allowed to stay in the chamber. Although his illness had taken its toll, Wilfrid had still been fully in charge of himself and his men. Not like now. Instead of leaving, she had hidden herself and listened anyway. The seeds of revenge had already been planted, but that meeting had encouraged them to flourish.
Wilfrid was too ill to go, but she was not. She would go and see Sigurd dead with her own eyes, then she would come back with the joyful news. Naively, she had imagined that Sigurd’s death and the triumph that followed would bring Wilfrid back to himself. That somehow it would cure his grief and the wounds on his mind and make him whole again.
But that had not happened. It was only after Annis returned home, silent with the horror of what had happened tormenting her, that word of Sigurd’s death had found its way back to them. A message sent by one of the assassins had delivered the news. It had been confirmed many times over by whispers of travellers who had heard it in other parts of Northumbria. A king’s death, no matter how minor the king, was always good for a story on a cold night.
Her euphoria had never come. The sense of justice for Grim had never been felt. Grim was still gone. Their babe was gone. Countless men—and women—could die and that would always be true.
How foolish of her not to
