The Witch and The Warrior by Karyn Monk

Author:Karyn Monk [Monk, Karyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-16T01:49:30+00:00

��and that cloud over there is a stout little man with an enormous belly,� Gwendolyn continued, shading her eyes against the sun as she studied the sky. �Actually, it looks somewhat like Munro. Do you see him, David?�

He did not answer. Gwendolyn glanced at him and saw he had fallen asleep.

�I see it,� said Cameron. �But I�m thinking it looks more like my great round ball of a wife.�

�That�s a very gallant observation,� Gwendolyn remarked wryly. �I shall be sure to tell Clarinda you said so.�

�She won�t mind,� Cameron said, pillowing his head in his enormous hands. �She�s too happy to finally have a bairn inside her again to take any notice of her shape.�

Gwendolyn regarded him in confusion. Clarinda had never mentioned having another child. �Again?�

He nodded. �We had a bairn over two years ago�a wee girl. She died as Clarinda labored to birth her�strangled on her own cord.�

So this was why Clarinda often seemed troubled as she stroked her belly, Gwendolyn realized. I only hope I can do a fair job of bringing it into the world, she had said. Gwendolyn had assumed Clarinda was merely expressing her concern as a young woman about to bear her first child. But Clarinda had been heavy and round once before, had laid her hand against the firm swell of her stomach and laughed at the movements of the bairn inside her, and had waited excitedly for the day she would be able to hold her beloved babe in her arms.

Instead she had given birth to a baby without life.

�How horrible for her,� Gwendolyn murmured.

�It was,� Cameron agreed sadly. �She begged to see the child. Perhaps after all those months of feeling it grow and move inside her, she could not believe it was truly dead. But Elspeth told her it was sinful for a mother to want to gape at her dead bairn�a child that had died for its mother�s earthly sins.� His mouth tightened with contempt. �I was up at the keep with Alex and Brodick, waiting for news of the birth. Everyone advised me that this was best. �Twas cowardly of me, I suppose, but I did not think I could bear to listen to my sweet Clarinda screaming in agony. Even Clarinda had asked me to stay well away until it was over. But the fact that I wasn�t with her meant I couldn�t tell Elspeth to shut her pious mouth and give the dead bairn to my wife to hold.� He stared grimly at the sky a moment, then shook his head. �Perhaps it was for the best. The sight of the poor thing might only have made it worse for Clarinda.�

Gwendolyn said nothing. Had she been Clarinda, she had no idea whether she would have had the courage to look upon her dead child or not.

�By the time I got there, they had taken the bairn away and Clarinda was crazed with grief. �Twas impossible to know what was best for her. But for months afterward she wept about the fact that she had not been permitted to see or hold her little girl.

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