Mon Dec 04, 2006 5:03 am
Ronan Longbows’ Fifth child a daughter had come as an unwelcome surprise. Oh it wasn’t that he disliked hated the girl. No it was merely that he was well past 30 when Nimah made her disruptive appearance, as was his wife. Their youngest boy was twelve and Adele had not conceived in all those years.
Who, Longbow asked himself as he stood in the upper room under the slanting rafters, looking down on his wife’s still face, would have expected this?
The sun shining through a roof louvre showed the dancing dust motes caught within a ray of sunlight. Seeing them made him angry, for they looked as if they were alive, while Adele was not. He was going to be lonely. He had been that while she was alive. But now it would be worse. His home was in here in Myrken wood now but he was not a native. Ronan Longbow was Irish. He had followed his exiled lord, long ago. But when the lord made up the quarrel, which had sent him into exile, and went home, longbow had stayed behind.
He had stayed, because by then he was married and Adele, cut off from her small holding and her own language, would have been far more lost in Ireland than he was here in Myrken. She had married him believing that he would remain with her on the holding and he would not break even an unspoken agreement, not when it would cause her so much anguish.
She had spoken only the common tongue and he had never realized, until his lord had gone, how much one’s own language meant. Even the dullest remarks would have sounded like music, if he could have heard them in Gaelic.
But she had cared for him and their four sons, worked like a demon to make the holding productive. She had tried hard to learn his native tongue; she had loved him. Moments of true clarity are rare being aware of them even more so but it was then in such a moment, he came to know he loved her. Staring down at her still, at the stray lock of hair that always fell across her face, he felt a lump rise unbidden in his throat. Callused fingers reached out with a gentle touch not many knew he had and he tucked the errant lock behind her ear and leaning over placed a kiss upon her brow. Straightening he drew the rug over her face and turned away to descend the ladder to the ground floor, trying not to cry. It wouldn’t bring her back, nothing would.
The room below was sunny and spacious and as he stepped off the ladder he realized it was lacking in something, missing a piece of itself. It took only a breath, a heartbeat or two for him to know it was her soft words of greeting, then his gaze dropped to the clean floor. A floor that was clean because Adele had swept it only moments before her pains had begun.
The need to grieve overwhelmed him and he blundered, eyes flooding to a stool, ignoring the two people who were already in the room - three, if one counted the child in the cradle. The others were the midwife, who was clucking over the newborn bundle which was his daughter, and the cleric who had blessed both mother and babe, just in case, though the brat seemed healthy enough, Ronan thought with bitterness, burying his face in his hands.
But although he didn’t want to be pestered with any of them, it was clear after a few moments that something was expected of him. The cleric was clearing his throat. Ronan raised his head and realized his youngest son was missing. “Where’s Wardâ€