Beloved Daughter by Ellis Brightwell

Author:Ellis Brightwell [Brightwell, Ellis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Winter Blood Moon Harvest Publishing

19

Daughter

Derwen comes back to us clutching bundled cloth rather than Florentina’s hair. Rosamond follows her, clinging to Annette’s gowns the way a young boy might follow after a snake that slithers through soft earth made wet by fresh rain. Rosamond rests her slender fingers on my unborn child, while Annette’s knuckled alder twigs find my sweaty forehead. Myrah waves Derwen’s green-gowned legs away from her cheek.

“Florentina does not come,” says Derwen as she steps back. “Constantine’s head is wounded. He has need of her.”

“What happened?” says Rosamond.

“You did not feel it?” says Annette.

“We felt it,” says Myrah. “Constantine more so than we, it seems.”

Myrah’s eyes search mine.

“Go to him, if you wish,” I say. “I will bear it.”

Myrah takes my hair from beneath the neck of my linen. She lifts my head into her lap with my yellow strands spread out over her legs and onto the stone floor like straw. Derwen sets her bundle of cloth under my head.

“All this stone for bedding and a table,” she says.

“We will find better use for it,” says Myrah. “Now, do the same with your words and hands so Ardelle’s child does not hate you for keeping her from her mother.”

Derwen kneels and sets her hand on my belly but does not sing with Annette and Rosamond. The aching in my sides ebbs into the slow-flowing calm of a summer stream’s water, though my hips still suffer in the unyielding grip of unseen, bony hands. Rosamond looks up.

“That is what happened,” she says.

The aldorman walks through the room’s opening and falls onto his knees clutching bloodied linen against his head. Rosamond, Annette, and Derwen stare at him, as if by doing so they could keep his life-water from running down into the neck of his tunic.

“One of you, help him,” Myrah growls.

They stare at one another while Constantine groans words in a tongue that none of us speak. Florentina drags herself into the room by her forearms, one before the other, her red gown following after her. Derwen stands and walks to her with bowed legs. When she bends down to take up Florentina, Florentina waves Derwen’s hands away. She sits up next to Constantine’s wounded head and brings her nose up to her eyes at the sight of what lies beneath his reddened head linen. She shows us the ridges of her palm bearing smeared blood.

“Where is Luda?” says Derwen.

“Am I her keeper?” says Florentina. “She goes to fetch some maid the aldorman wished to give the blessing of life when Ardelle’s child is born. He should have given himself the same. Speaking will make it no better, Cyneric. Lie still.”

The aldorman does as Florentina wishes so well that he neither speaks nor stirs thereafter. The blood-soaked linen falls from his hand; his head has been cleft above his right temple. Amid his hair writhe green worms fat with blood. Fingers hide my eyes.

“You had nothing to do with that,” says Myrah.

A wave of stinging, hot water floods through my belly and into my waist, where it empties itself into mist beneath my dry gowns.

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