Outlaw (Medieval Trilogy 3)

“Gods—you mean God,” Megan said.

“Aye, Him, too.” Sighing, she placed a candle on a small table near the bed and the flame flickered in the breath of wind stirring through the castle. “There’s good and bad in the world, m’lady. Everyone has a share of each.”

“What is it you’re trying to tell me, Isolde?”

“There was a death tonight,” the old one said, her eyes far away. “At Dwyrain.”

“Nay—”

“Your father, lass.”

“Nay! Nay! Nay! I believe you not!” Megan cried, though the lines of sadness around the old woman’s eyes and etching over her forehead half convinced her.

“ ’Tis true. He was helped to his death by your husband.”

The world jolted and spun. Megan’s breath stopped dead in her lungs. “No,” she cried, but sensed the woman would not have come here if she did not believe it.

“I sensed a tremor, child, a rending in the air. ’Twas Ewan giving up his life.”

Megan’s bones no longer supported her. She felt as if the world had stopped, as if life itself had withered. Her father, her wonderful father, now dead? Though she’d told herself that his death had been imminent, that there was a chance she wouldn’t see him alive again, she could not believe that he was really gone. Tears gathered in her eyes, but she held them at bay, refusing to break down. “Leave me alone. I—I believe this not.”

“There is more.”

“I do not want to hear it.”

Isolde reached forward and grabbed Megan’s fingers, still clutching the coverlet. “Aye, this news is sweet,” she said with a smile. “For every death, there is new life, and you, m’lady, carry new life in your womb.”

Megan couldn’t speak. Her words jumbled and clogged in her throat. A baby? Is that what the woman was saying? She was going to have a child? Wolf’s issue? “How … how would you know?”

Isolde sighed. “ ’Tis a gift,” she said.

“You practice the dark arts.”

“Aye,” she admitted. “Some say I be a witch, but ’tis not true. I’m a nursemaid. ’Twas I who helped Lady Sorcha come into this world.”

Megan glanced down at her flat abdomen, now covered with thick blankets. Could this be true? Could she believe this glorious gift had been given her and deny the woman’s death sentence for her father?

“As for the babe growing within you, ’tis early yet, the child only just conceived.”

Megan swallowed hard. A baby! Though she felt a deep grief at the loss of her father—if the old woman spoke the truth—the thought of bringing Wolf’s child into the world brought with it a joy she’d never before known.

Isolde placed a warm, aged hand over the furs and blankets that covered Megan’s abdomen. A small smile played at the edges of her thin lips. “I know not what it will be, ’tis much too soon. But ye must be careful, Megan. This babe was created by great love. You must take care of yourself and of it. Now”—she reached for her candle—“sleep well. Both of you.”

Megan slid lower in the bed and placed a hand over the skin stretched between her hipbones. Could she believe this old woman? Was Ewan really dead? Did a child grow deep inside her?

Tears slid down her face and she knew not if they came from grief or happiness.

Thirteen

solde told me you were with child,” Sorcha said as her husband gathered together a small band of men to accompany Megan to Dwyrain. Leah had already left Erbyn with a sentry and was riding to her duties in the nunnery.

Now Sorcha and Megan stood on the steps of the keep, cowls pulled tight around their necks, hems caught in the stiff breeze. From the armorer’s hut came the clank of a metal hammer repairing broken links of mail; from the outer bailey could be heard the slice of saws and chop of axes chewing through timbers for firewood and beams. In a lean-to near the farrier’s hut a wheelwright pounded new spokes into a broken cart wheel.

Smoke filled the air and icy rain drizzled from the heavens.

Megan glanced away from the questions in the other woman’s deep blue eyes. “Isolde is only guessing. ’Tis too early to tell.”

“But ’tis possible.”