“Good!” Cailin said, but despite their agreement in the matter, her voice within nagged her yet. She remained on her guard, but for what, she was unable to tell.
Royse Wulfsone was born on the nineteenth day of May. Unlike his sister’s hard birth, his entry into the world was a swift and easy one. Cailin awoke in the hour of the false dawn to realize her waters had broken. Within minutes she was being racked with labor, and in the hour that the sky began to lighten with the new day, the baby was born, howling lustily, his face red, his small arms flailing. Nellwyn had assisted her mistress with the birth, but Aelfa swooned at the sight of the blood involved and had to be carried from the solar.
Cailin and Wulf’s son was strong and healthy from the moment of his birth. He suckled eagerly at his mother’s breasts, and always seemed hungry. Denied her daughter’s infancy, Cailin reveled in her motherhood. Sensitive, however, to Aurora’s feelings, she involved the little girl in her brother’s care as much as she could so that Aurora would not feel neglected. As a big sister, Aurora, who would be four in the late summer, did admirably, running to fetch her mother at her baby brother’s least cry, helping to dress him, watching over him with Nellwyn.
“She is so patient with him,” Cailin observed. “He is going to be very spoiled, I fear. He already recognizes her.”
“Do you see how strong he is?” Wulf said proudly. “He will be a big man someday. Perhaps even bigger than I am.”
When Royse was six weeks old, and Cailin fully recovered from the birth, Wulf Ironfist set off to visit his villages. Before he left, he called Aelfa into his and Cailin’s presence. She came meekly, looking particularly pretty in a pale blue tunica she had made from a length of fabric Cailin had given her on Beltane.
“How may I serve you, lord?” she inquired politely.
“Has your memory returned yet, even in part, maiden?” he asked her quietly, his voice both gentle and encouraging.
Aelfa’s light green eyes grew visibly misty. “Alas, my lord, no,” she answered him. “I have tried to remember something of myself, but I cannot. Ohh, what will become of me?”
“It is time that you were wed,” Wulf answered her.
“Wed?” Aelfa looked startled. This was obviously not something that she had even considered. “You would marry me?”
Cailin hissed angrily. The nerve of the wench!
“Not I,” he said, somewhat startled himself by her words. “I go tomorrow to tour the villages belonging to my holding. Since you can remember nothing of yourself, and we have heard of no lost lasses in the time you have been with us, then it is time for you to begin a new life. As lord of this land, your welfare is my responsibility. I will therefore seek out a good husband for you, and you will be wed as soon as it is possible. Before the summer’s end, I think.”
“But I do not think I want a husband,” Aelfa said nervously. “Perhaps I already have a husband, my lord. What if that is so?”
“Is it, Aelfa? Do you have a husband?” He pierced her with a sharp look. “Perhaps you have run away from a husband who caught you with a lover and then beat you for your faithlessness.”
“I cannot remember, my lord,” she stubbornly insisted.
“Then,” Wulf said, smiling benignly, “I think it best we find you a good man and resettle you, maiden. Is it agreed?”
For a very long moment Aelfa was silent, and then finally she said, “Yes, my lord, but could you not marry me yourself?”
“One wife is more than enough for me,” he replied with a chuckle. “Eh, lambkin?” He swept a loving look at Cailin by his side.
“You will never need another,” she said quietly.
When Nellwyn learned of the other girl’s fate, she complained to her mistress, “Why is it that Aelfa is to have a husband and I am not? Have I not served you well, my lady?”
“More than well, Nellwyn,” Cailin assured her. “You may have a husband whenever you choose him, unless, of course, you would prefer that my lord and I select a good man for you. Aelfa is alone in the world and needs our aid; but you, Nellwyn, have always had me, and whatever you desire within reason I will give you for your faithful service.”
“When Aelfa first came,” Nellwyn told her mistress, “I thought