Madlenka hadn’t seen Marek around all morning. She wondered where he was. A man in holy orders couldn’t fight, but he should have been helping in the infirmary.
“Anton was,” his brother said thoughtfully. “A holy terror, I mean. Drove the castle staff crazy. And Father. Even Vlad and me.”
So the abrupt change of subject was a lead-in to a litany of Anton’s virtues and pending sainthood, was it? She thought she already knew quite as much about her husband as she ever needed to.
“We were all,” the baron said. “Or almost all, glad when he discovered puberty. At least that channeled his villainy along predictable lines. But Wulf…” Ottokar sighed.
It was not to be a lecture about Anton. She waited.
“Until he was about seven, Wulf was a bull; a small bull, but deadly. When he charged, you couldn’t stop him. You just had to get out of his way, although sometimes you could distract him by waving a red flag, or a honey cake, in his case.” Otto turned to peer up innocently at the bulk of the Hogback, rising almost vertically to the clouds above them.
“And after he reached seven? A little young for puberty, surely?”
“I’m not at all sure he’s reached puberty even yet.”
“I am.”
“Well, he’s growing up fast,” the baron told the sky. “After he reached seven, he was more like a bull dog than a bull. Once he got his teeth into something, there was never any way to get them out again.” Otto sighed and then smiled at her. “No way at all.”
So what was he hinting? Was this a warning or encouragement? th=t="0em"›
“We must all be very grateful to him for what he did today,” she said. “If he did it, I mean.”
“If he did it,” the baron agreed.
“And he cured Anton’s injuries on Tuesday.”
This time it was the baron who remained silent.
Was he hinting that Anton ought to step aside and let Wulf marry Madlenka, or was she just reading too much into an offer of friendship and perhaps support? Something, almost certainly this morning’s victory, had changed Otto’s attitude since last night, when he had plainly disapproved of Wulf’s intrusion into the Anton-Madlenka match.
“Gratitude becomes a man,” Madlenka said. “But it’s too late, isn’t it?” A handfasting was as binding as a marriage. “Would even gratitude help now?”
“I don’t know,” Otto said sadly. “I just don’t know.”
CHAPTER 8
Satisfied that there were no more casualties in need of transportation, Madlenka headed home along the wall walk, smiling to all the happy people she passed, listening to the laughter echoing up from the streets.
She was effectively alone! Since her handfasting three days ago, Anton had made sure that never happened-except for one precious moment last night, when she had exchanged a few words with Wulf. But otherwise she had always been escorted by her maids or Giedre or Noemi or Ivana or Mother or some combination. And now, just by chance, there was nobody watching over her. Except possibly Wulf? When she came to Fishermen’s Bartizan, the temptation was much too strong to resist. She turned aside and ran up the steps.
Because the curtain wall that enclosed both town and castle stood atop high cliffs, it could not be assaulted, and so had few watchtowers. Fishermen’s was about midway between the north gate and the keep, roughly at the northeast corner, and was so named because the drop below it was very nearly sheer. In theory you could lower a fishing line to the Ruzena River, although in practice the resident wind would never let it reach the water. When Petr and she had been young, they had tried dangling bait, in the hope of catching eagles. All they had accomplished was to get themselves thoroughly soiled with bird droppings and forbidden to go in there again-an edict they would conveniently forget in a month or so.
As always, the bartizan was deserted, just a small stone cage suspended from the lip of the wall. A drifting of snow hid the filth on the floor and the swallows had fled their nests in search of winter quarters. There was nowhere to sit, but she stood for a few minutes relishing her solitude. To the north she could see the mouth of the gorge. The Wends were building their gun emplacement there. The last ragtag survivors of the assault force were still slinking homeward, tails between legs.
If they did not quickly return under a flag of truce to collect their dead and wounded, there would not be any wounded. Already the Gallant scavengers were out on the road, stripping armor and weapons, slitting throats and purses. Undoubtedly some Wends must have ridden the ladders over the cliff, down to the riverbank. There was a small patch of forest there, an inaccessible corner between the base of the cliffs and the river. Ancient stories told of other assailants ending down there and long-ago bishops consecrating it as a Christian graveyard.
The wind was making her shiver. Mother would notice her absence and raise a hue and cry. Still she lingered, wondering, hoping… If she knew the names of Wulf’s Voices, she would pray to them to tell him that she was alone, so if he could spare a minute from important men’s work in this hazardous time… But she didn’t know the names. Dreams, only dreams.
She turned to go and he was standing in the doorway, gazing at her.
They collided into each other’s arms in a rib-cracking embrace. Anton had taught her what a man expected from a kiss. Wulf did not know the details, but he proved to be a very fast learner. It was a wonderful, passionate, soul-consuming, never-ending kiss.
Yet nothing in the world lasts forever. They broke it off eventually and just hugged, chins on shoulders, cheek against stubbled cheek. She was as tall as Wulf was-too tall, really, but the right height for Anton. Nothing else was right about Anton.
“Oh, God!” he whispered. “I love you! I have never wanted anyone or anything as much as I want you.”
“Me the same.” If he asked her to go away with him, she would, and damn the consequences, terrible though those must be. But he knew that already, and for either of them to say so now would trigger disaster for both.
“Now I know why lust is such a popular sin.”
“Love, not lust! You think I kiss every man like that?”
Grunt.
“If your brother gave kisses like that, you think I’d be here with you?”
Wulf pulled back just enough to put them eye-to-eye, much too close to focus. “You mean you like my kissing better than Anton’s?”
“His are just slobber. Yours are heaven.”
“Lady, my experience of kisses can be counted on the thumbs of one hand.”
She gave him another one for practice. Not quite so intense, perhaps, but even better, more deliberate, even longer. When it was over-
“Don’t let go,” sh co, amp;iv e murmured. “I’ll fall down.”
“We must let go,” he whispered. “Nothing good can come of this.”
He was right. Nothing good, only pain. Wulf was always right. Her handfasting to Anton ranked the same as marriage in the eyes of the Church. Few people below the rank of kings were ever granted a divorce, and about the only excuse for that was consanguinity. Even if she could prove that she and Anton shared ancestors a few generations back, then Wulf must be just as closely related to her.
If they ran away to cohabit out of wedlock, they would be in a state of sin all their lives. Friends and families would spurn them. Their children would be scorned and despised as bastards. Their daughters would never make a decent marriage; their sons could not enter a craft guild or a profession. Nor could a man marry his brother’s widow. She must not even think about that possibility.
“You’re right,” she said. “Mother will be tearing the walls down. If she isn’t, my… your brother will be. I must go.”
He released her carefully and stepped back, holding her hands as if unable to break the contact completely. There were tears in those golden wolf eyes. Men never wept; it must be the wind.