Without the apron, axe or shoes, I had nothing else to remove except my dress. I stood there, unsure. I needed to retrieve my nightgown from the wardrobe, but he was standing in front of it, still watching me.
He cleared his throat and said abruptly, “I will allow you to change for the evening.” He left and I heard his steps cross the hall, his knock on Thatcher’s door and the door’s opening and closing. Muffled, I heard Alric murmur something and then Thatcher’s bark of laughter and uproarious cry of “for fuck’s sake.”
I changed into my cotton nightgown with its long hem and short sleeves. I climbed into the bed on the side farthest from the door. There was a candle on the desk still lit and the sky was not yet dark. I read Gareth’s journal until the sun had set. Then I placed the book on the floor next to me and curled on my side, facing the wall on the left.
I thought I heard another laugh from Thatcher as I wondered when my husband would return. He did shortly after that thought and closed the door gently behind him, assuming I was sleeping. I could not help myself. I looked over my shoulder so that, with just a sliver of vision, I could see him as he unlaced his boots.
He took them and his socks off, placing them at the base of the wardrobe. He took off his shortsleeved tunic. He had no undershirt on due to the warmth of the day. His torso was more slender than I had thought, but he was still strong in his shoulders, chest and arms, the muscles ropy, his strength more wiry than brutish. My right eye lingered on the laces of his breeches as he undid them. He shucked them off, the candlelight playing on his long legs, also muscled, but in an agile, limber way. He wore a pair of dark linen breeks that stopped midway down his thighs. He was folding his breeches when I realized he would be turning towards the bed and may see my right cheek slanted just so over my shoulder and I shifted my head back towards the wall. He took a few steps towards the desk and the candle was blown out.
We were entirely in darkness together.
Because the bed was big, his weight as he climbed in did not disturb me or cause me to roll towards the middle. I wanted to continue to pretend being asleep but something about this man undid the careful maturing I had done in Eccleston. Thrush had always accused me of being hotheaded, emotional and never able to shut my mouth. I had learned to curb my speech, to speak more gracefully and to remain silent when nothing needed said. It was a practice that I believed made me head scribe.
Alric Angler undid it all.
“Should we have a schedule?” I asked before I could curtail my tongue. I felt his flinch at realizing I was awake.
“I thought you were asleep,” he said gruffly.
I did not answer him. I could tell he was lying on his back. Where the boldness came from, I did not know, but I turned so that I was laying on my back too and turned my head towards him. The moon was in a waning phase, but there was enough weakened starlight to make out his profile.
He seemed to be determined to stare at the stone ceiling. “As I have already said,” his voice weary, “I will be up early every single morning with Procurer trials. Or I will be sent away again by our king on some business, preparing for this war.”
“I see.” I replied. “Then I shall let you sleep.” And I turned back to the wall.
There was a pause and he then said, “Edith.”
I did not answer.
“Edith, I did not mean to be short.” He breathed in and then out. “I do not know how to do this. I have never been a husband.” There was a note of sadness in his words.
“What do you not know how to do?” I remained staring into the dark.
Another pause and then he said, “I do not even know how to answer that question. Wife.” He said the last word as an afterthought, but there was no cruelty in his delivery.
There was twinge in my chest at the way he said the word ‘wife,’ like he was trying it out. “Alric,” I began, using his name the way he had said mine. “We will figure it out. One day at a time. I promise you, I will try to be civil and considerate. As you have been.” I stretched my legs out under the blankets and yawned. “And I thank you for the note about the turret. You were right. It is breathtaking.”
He said nothing.
“I certainly owe you my life and I owe you for every single item in my possession. As well as the lives of my fellow captives. I am indebted to you. You have been… merciful. And hospitable. I will not return that with disagreement.”
He did not answer, but later, on the edge of sleep, I could have sworn he said, “You owe me nothing, Edith.”
42. Eavesdropping
Days passed and we slept next to each other at night. I believe we both avoided the room. If I wanted to read, I walked up to the highest landing on the stairwell and sat in the turret. Or I spent evenings in the dormitory. He rose early, as he had pledged, before I woke. He took his baths at night and came into our bed smelling of soap and that scent of man I had inhaled on the back of his horse in Nyossa. We spoke little, but were polite. Sometimes, I would look up from dining with the other women or earth temple staff and thought I found his eyes on me, from where he ate with the Procurers, but I could never quite catch his gaze.
He spent his days testing all the young men who were auditioning to be the twentieth Procurer. The training yards were on stretches of a plateau of lower bluff rock that sat between the city and the keep, most of them covered in a layer of clayish mud. Also on this plateau were a granary, the liveries and other armies’ barracks in buildings erected up against the keep’s walls. Dozens of stairwells led from the keep to the plateau and down to the city. One could exit almost any part of the bluffs and use these stairs, the temples of air and sea, the Shark’s Keep and the temples of earth and fire. Two large dirt ramps led from the top of the bluffs to the liveries and down to the city for the ease of horses. It was on one of these we had entered the city as captives. The cavalry also kept a second stables down in Pikestully.
One of the narrow windows in Mother Earth’s temple’s antechamber was cut low enough into the rock for me to see down to the plateau. The day after Alric’s return, I peered outside and noticed the training yards were directly below our temple.
Hundreds of men in civilian clothing and the rest of the Procurers in their Tintarian black lined the low wall that surrounded the clay yard. My husband, stripped of his armor, only in his boots, breeches and that shortsleeved black tunic, was in the center, fist-fighting a man half his age and much larger than he. And he was winning. He weaved and evaded again and again, the younger man wearing out and when his movements slowed, Alric jabbed out and caught the man on the chin and down he went.
A roar went up from both the contenders and the Procurers.
Alric pulled the young man up from the clay mud and shook his hand.
“That’s my fuckin’ brother,” called Thatcher from his seat on the wall, hands clapping. “Still swings a hard right over forty, lads! Think you’ve a chance now?”
