Cerdic favored him with a wry look.
“I’ve seen the way the man shadows your steps. Does he ever spend any time in Inhrypum? He follows you around like a hound.”
Aldfrith laughed. “Only he’s far worse company than Argus.”
The pair of them rode in companionable silence for a distance, their horses passing through mist-wreathed trees. The leaves were turning, the canopy a riot of gold and red. Aldfrith breathed in the scent of rich earth, moss, and damp vegetation.
His thoughts turned inward as he rode, traveling back to the funeral feast the night before—and to Osana.
Even pale with grief, and anxious about the future, she was lovely. After his experiences as a younger man, he now deliberately ignored the flirtatious smiles and limpid gazes of women, but there was something about Osana that made him unable to concentrate on anything else.
When she was near, he turned into a gawking fool.
He should not have made that offer—to invite her to live at Bebbanburg had been foolish. But the words had escaped before he had time to check them, and he could not take them back.
The last thing he needed was to be distracted by the comely widow. After Cuthburh, he vowed to have nothing to do with women. And yet when he looked at Osana, he forgot that promise.
She had looked so alone the night before, he’d wanted to help her.
Aldfrith exhaled sharply.Enough.He needed to turn his mind to other matters. Glancing right, his gaze alighted upon Cerdic’s serious profile. His expression was grim, and Aldfrith wondered why.
He realized then that he knew very little about the warrior who had served him so loyally over the past two years.
“Why the frown, Cerdic?” he asked.
The warrior glanced across at him, surprised. Recovering, he grimaced. “I’m from Hagustaldes, sire,” he said after a moment. “This visit brought back unwelcome memories.”
Aldfrith watched him. “How so?”
He saw the discomfort on the man’s face and immediately regretted the question. But a moment later Cerdic answered. “It reminds me of my wife … She died five summers ago, giving birth to our child. Both she and the babe died.”
The raw pain in Cerdic’s eyes as he said those last words was visceral. Even years on, the memory was an open wound. Suddenly, Aldfrith saw Cerdic with fresh eyes. The man’s aloofness now made sense.
“I did not know of this loss,” Aldfrith replied. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
The warrior shrugged, the impenetrable mask he usually wore sliding back into place. “It’s in the past now,” he said, his tone making it clear that he wished to change the subject. “This visit just dredged up old memories … that’s all.”
Looking at his face, at the lines that formed deep grooves on either side of his mouth and furrowed his brow, Aldfrith knew Cerdic was lying. He hid it well, but Aldfrith could see the warrior carried his grief with him every day.
It occurred to Aldfrith then that they were not really that different. He too carried scars from his past. He liked to think of himself as healed of them, yet his reaction to the ealdorman’s widow revealed that, despite the passing of the years, they still pained him.
“Where shall I put these, Osana?” the servant asked. The woman—Lora—stood outside the space Osana and Raedwulf had once shared, her arms full of furs.
“Take them to my new alcove please,” Osana replied. “This way.”
Her own arms filled with clothing, Osana led the way around the rim of the hall to the alcove nearest the doors. It was the smallest of any of the sleeping spaces and the draftiest too—but at least she was not to sleep out on the main floor with the others.
At least they had left her some dignity.
Osana looked around the space, at the ceiling so low that she could not stand at her full height without knocking her head. Her mouth compressed.
A slight dignity.
“This isn’t right.” Lora’s voice, low and angry, made Osana turn. The servant had deposited the furs but was now standing at the entrance to the alcove, hands on hips.
For the first time, Osana took proper notice of Lora. Small and curvaceous with curly blonde hair, a pert face, and bright blue eyes, Lora was roughly the same age as Osana. She had not been a servant in the ealdorman’s hall for a long time—a handful of moons at most—and during that time Osana had been too immersed in her own unhappiness to take heed of her.
But she did now. Lora was genuinely outraged on her behalf, and Osana found that quizzical.
