In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,30
but Biddy had grown as round and plump as a larded dumpling. What she had lost in speed, however, she had gained in perseverance, and their positions as stalked and stalker reversed on a regular basis.
This day, their minor drama was eclipsed by the arriving hail of tiny booted feet. Three dark-haired boys and two squealing girls raced full tilt out of the darkness of the upper landing and tumbled down the stairs into the great hall. They ran toward their parents, converging from five points of attack to grasp a leg or an arm or a folded pleat of skirting. Robert followed at a more sedate pace, the sixth and youngest bundle of energy squirming in his arms and wailing to be set free to join the general melee.
“Sweet Mother Mary,” Servanne said with a helpless laugh. “Why do I even think I can run this household as a normal dwelling? I should simply throw the gates wide and invite Chaos to move in amongst us.”
The Wolf glanced down at his beautiful wife and his look of adoration encompassed the seven handsome children she had given him. “Chaos is already here, my love, and in truth, I would not have had it any other way.”
“Liar,” she muttered, but tilted her mouth up to his for a kiss that left both their eyes shining.
The Wolf felt the clutch of a tiny fist on his sleeve and turned to answer the wail of his youngest babe, but a sudden stab of pain in his hip and thigh transformed the movement into a dizzying moment of instability.
“There,” Servanne said smartly. “Did I not tell you you were trying to do too much too soon! Children—leave go of your father. Robin, give Rhiannon to Biddy and fetch your father’s walking sticks.”
“Robert—stand fast,” the Wolf commanded. “I neither want nor need any blasted walking sticks. The wound is a nuisance, nothing more. And a good deal less than what I have endured in the past.”
“In the past, you were a good deal younger,” Servanne reminded him. “Robin, the sticks, if you please.”
“Robert …” The warning in the Wolf’s voice was as silkily deceptive as the faint tug of a smile that curved his lips. “You may indeed fetch the sticks. Fetch them directly into the fire.”
Robert looked from his mother to his father. He handed the babe into Biddy’s pendulous arms then picked up the two carved and polished oak staffs the castle carpenter had fashioned into crutches. One after the other, he tucked the sticks under the crooks of his father’s arms, securing them with a look of icy blue challenge in his eyes.
“After so many similar battles,” he said with a pragmatism far beyond his years, “do you still think you can win an argument with Mother?”
The Wolf stared at his son for a long moment—a moment poised between violence and grudging respect—and because he could not help but see his wife in the boy’s eyes, he tilted his head back and broke the tension with a deep, husky laugh.
“By God, he must be a fitting handful for Eduard.”
“He is a true wolf’s cub,” Alaric agreed lightly. “I see more of you growing in him each day.”
“Whereas I see more of his mother.” The gesture that accompanied another robust roll of laughter sent Lord Randwulf swaying off balance again and both Alaric and Robert reached out hastily to offer assistance. “Bah! Heave off, the pair of you; I am not ready to meet the floor just yet. Come with me while I hobble and limp my way into a corner where, Deo volente, we shall be left in peace with a tankard or two of good, strong ale. Where the devil is Eduard? Surely, by St. Anthony’s longest whisker, he has not been away so long as to forget his way to the cellars?”
Chapter 4
Eduard could have found his way to the huge cellars blindfolded. The descent into the bowels of the keep took him down a winding corkscrew staircase, the passage lit at intervals by torches propped in iron cressets bolted to the stone walls. Where there was a torch, there was usually a landing or passageway marking the entrances to the rooms used for storing grain and vegetables, bolts of precious cloth, oaken bins of recently harvested apples and turnips. In this vaulted underbelly of the castle there were also chambers originally designed for confining prisoners, and, in a salle one had to pass before reaching the deep, cool core