Secret Song (Medieval Song 4)

She continued to chew, looking straight ahead.

He wouldn’t continue to let her ignore him. “Dying is the coward’s way as well. It wouldn’t solve any problems at all. You would just be buried with some of them, yet the feel of them would still exist and eat at others who still lived.”

She looked at him then, her expression as closed as his own. “I care not about your problems, Roland. They are yours and thus you are responsible for them. I would that you leave me alone. I would that you would seek an annulment.”

“It appears obvious to me that you will gain neither of your wishes. Don’t tell me you wish to contemplate visiting a convent again?”

Daria closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the pillows. She wanted to shudder at the thought of a convent. Her belly was full, but she felt so tired, weary to the depths of her, and now he was baiting her.

“Please go.”

“No. I’ve left you alone for two days. No longer. Now I will carry you to Graelam’s bedchamber. He wishes to see you. His guilt is palpable and you must assuage it.”

“His guilt. That is utterly absurd. It was my decision to try to save him, not his. If there is guilt to bear, it is mine and no one else’s.”

“That’s what I told him, but he refuses to accept my word. Do you need to relieve yourself?”

She shook her head at that.

“Good. Let me take the tray, then.?

?? He paused, looking down at her. Katherine had braided her hair, but it was lank and lifeless. There were purple smudges under her eyes, but it was her eyes themselves that frightened him. They looked vague and lost. He shook himself. It made no sense. She would come around. He would make her come around. At least there was some color in her face now from the meal she’d eaten.

“I don’t wish to see him.”

“I don’t care what you wish,” he said. She didn’t fight him, merely held herself stiffly until she didn’t have any more strength, then laid her head on his shoulder as he carried her to Graelam’s bedchamber.

Roland kicked the door open with his foot and called out, “I have brought you a treat, Graelam. What say you, Kassia? Shall I place my wife in bed with your husband? Perhaps we could begin a row of invalids. I could go fetch others. What do you think?”

“I think the two of them is plenty, Roland,” Kassia said, and smoothed a place beside Graelam. “Place her here if you wish it.” But Roland shook his head, saying, “Nay, I believe I shall continue to hold her. She’s warm and soft. Bring that chair closer, Kassia.”

Roland settled into the chair, his wife held close against his chest.

“Now, Graelam, as you see, my wife is mending. Unlike you, she is pliable and docile. I told her to eat, and she ate. She lies gentle and uncomplaining in my arms.”

“Whilst you, husband,” Kassia continued, sitting beside her husband, “complain until I want to throw that chair at your head.”

Graelam stared at the pale-faced girl held in her husband’s lap. With Kassia and Roland here, he would never come to know what was in her mind. Soon, he thought. On the morrow he would visit her. He said now, his voice gentle, “I’m glad you ate your dinner.”

Daria nodded. She felt Roland’s arms around her, holding her as if he cared about her. She felt his warmth, the hardness of his man’s body, and wanted to weep. She felt pain so harsh it filled her and broke her completely, and she turned her face inward against his throat.

Roland felt her tears, felt the tremors go through her, yet she made no sound, just that awful racking of her body. He looked at Graelam and Kassia, their expressions appalled and concerned. “I will see you again,” he said to Graelam, and carried his wife back to their bedchamber. He didn’t release her, merely eased down on the bed, still holding her closely against him. “Are you cold?”

She didn’t reply, just continued to cry without making a sound. It tore at him, this silent pain of hers. He spoke to her then, quietly, his voice pitched soft and deep. “If I could change what happened, I would, Daria. Doubt it not. I do not rejoice that you lost the babe, for I could have lost you as well. I want you to mend, to smile again, to come back to me. Please, don’t weep.”

“When you last took me, you felt the babe and hated me and you hated him.”

Her voice was a whisper, and wet with hurt. He closed his eyes, remembering clearly that morning, remembering clearly how he’d felt when he’d touched the slight mound in her belly. He’d left her without a word. How had she felt?

“It isn’t true that you don’t rejoice.”

“Daria, listen to me. I’m your husband. I have told you before and I will tell you again. I would protect you now with my life. Then I would have protected you with my life. It seems that ever since that first time I saw you, I was ready to protect you. I don’t know why you won’t name the father. Perhaps it is because you fear I would be killed by him, for I know you care for me. But it’s no longer important. You are important, you and I and our life together.”

She stopped crying then. These tears were for the child, his child, and for her, and for the emptiness in her heart. Slowly, for she was so very weak, she lifted herself to look at him. “I will say this just once more, Roland, then never again. The babe I carried was yours, conceived that night in Wrexham. If you cannot bring yourself to believe in me, to believe that I would never lie to you, ever, then I wish you to seek an annulment. I don’t wish to remain here.”

“Daria—”

“No. I had prayed the babe would come in its time and it would look like its father—like you, Roland—that it would be a son and he would be dark like you, his eyes so black they looked like a moonless night, that when he smiled, it would be your smile you would see smiling back at you. It was a hope that I held deep within me, praying that it would be so, praying that then you would realize that I hadn’t lied to you. But God decided otherwise. Now there is nothing for you save my word to you.” She broke off on a gasp.