Hild shielded the candle flame with her hand, to lessen its light, as she peered round the door. She did not want to wake Brona from her sleep. She just wanted to check. To make sure she was actually there, back in her own bed.
The tavern-keep was more than grateful to Waelden and Yllfa for taking care of her girl of late, and to Ethel for standing by her as the good friend she was. But she had worried all the same. Bronaa had been through a lot these past weeks. Many youngsters sadly lost family, but fewer had their father involved in kidnapping them to silence them. Even now the girl was withdrawn, apart from when she was with Ethel or the animals. The normally chirpy Bronaa was a shadow of her former self, helping as told, but sitting alone and staring into nothing otherwise.
“Why couldn’t my papa be a bit more like Ethel’s?” she had muttered a few times.
‘Because I picked the wrong man’, Hild had thought in reply.
Perhaps she should have left her daughter with Waelden’s family for longer, Hild mused. She had felt safe there. She had been safe there once that horror, Criba, had been caught by Thilwend and the smith, and jailed. But Hild was still a mother, struggling herself over what had transpired. She was subdued. Strong? Aye, she could be that, but she needed her daughter back with her. They had to start again, grow together more, and move on.
Carefully, Hild let a little of the softly flickering light shine on the edge of the bed. Her girl lay facing the far wall, her light brown hair spilling back over the pillow and around her like a small cloak. Her favourite childhood toy, a wooden horse put aside a few years past, was within arms reach.
There were tears on Hilds pale cheeks. She recalled her child playing, yet Bronaa had never been truly happy as far as she remembered. There had been laughter at times. Mostly that had been when Paega was home, and took her up on his horse, or on the wagon. She had smiled at animal antics, and sometimes at the colours in the sky. But Hild had no recollection of real ‘joy’ touching her daughter.
She had almost lost Bronaa twice now. ‘Never again’ she chided herself. She had trusted Paega, and let him return. Look where that had brought them! Never again. It would be Hild and Bronaa from now on. They would grow close, to be the mother and daughter they always should have been.
She almost sighed, but instead shielded the light again and turned to leave the room.
“Sleep soundly, my dear,” she silently mouthed her blessing “Only good dreams.”
Closing the door as carefully as she could, she turned to the hound ‘Toothy’, who lay on the landing watching her closely. “Now stay and guard her. If anything unexpected happens, then bark as if all Dunland are invading.”
The dog looked at her intently with his warm, brown eyes. ‘Who would be afraid of him with his three teeth’, she thought. Yet she also knew he could bark like the best of hounds if needed.
Her husband had known that also. He had indeed tied the old dog up behind the stables the night she and Bronaa had ….ah, but she didn’t want to think back on the assault and kidnapping any more that she had to.
Toothy would have alerted them, had he been able.
And so up the final short staircase to her own bed. She swung the door open and steeled herself.
The sight still sent a slight shiver through her.
When she had first returned to Bancross she had sent Bronaa to trusted folk for safety, while she had gone straight to Captain Denholm to tell him all she knew. That had been a strange evening. She needed to hide both herself and Bronaa from general sight as the knowledge they were in Bancross would have given the game away. Her husband and that spy, Criba, could not know she was back.
So she told everything she knew to Denholm, her words tripping over each other in her hurry. The spies in the Roaring Dragon, the kidnapping, what she had overheard, the knocking out of their captor, the aid from Faldham. She told it all in a hurried manner, willing the captain to believe her even as he had a mug of mead brought to her. After all, she was known as a bit of a gossip, who perhaps sometimes exaggerated things. And Denholm had jumped at her words, seemingly doubting nothing. Not everyone in Bancross would have had that much faith in her. Not everyone in Bancross liked the new captain overmuch for that matter, but she… well she knew she could trust him at least.
He had been thoughtful of her needs. Kind almost, as if her well being mattered. And unlike some, she saw through some of his gruffness to a man who most likely did not want the job he had been appointed, and who most likely missed a wife and children back in Snowbourn. He was only human, like all others. And to crown it all, after the questioning, he did give up his bed for her until it was safe for her to come out of hiding. How many folk would have done that, she wondered? Well, Yllfa and Waelden would have cared for her, she suspected, and possibly Northgyth, and maybe Duncadda would have let her sleep in his barn, and… well. The Captain hid her in his own quarters. His chief witness, he would not risk her safety, but also he was a decent man who knew she had been through rather a lot.
He ordered Sergeant Thilwend, and that large man who always got her name wrong, to action straight away. The arrest of her husband, the most likely first move. Should she have tried to shield Paega, she wondered momentarily? But the thought of herself and Bronaa at the mercy of the wagon driver put pay to her pity. Let Paega face Denholm and his guards. He may have paid for she and Bronaa to be taken to Cliving, but he also must have known the sort of man he was trusting them to. One who would just as soon deliver them dead, and think he had upheld his side of the deal. Hild still trembled, though if it was with anger or sorrow she was unsure.
Denholm’s ‘quarters’ were small though, and often visited by other ranking guards of the garrison. The captain put up two screens to give her some privacy, and Hild spent many hours of the following few days and nights alone with her thoughts, or overhearing conversations about general issues with the garrison. She overheard a few other things too that would have piqued her curiosity in the past. There was one night when Denholm seemed to be talking to himself. It was almost as if he had forgotten she was there. He mentioned ‘underground’ several times after reading a letter delivered to him.
The following morning she mentioned it. A look of self-remonition crossed his face. “It will not happen again,” he had said, and it didn’t. Mostly because by then her husband and his main co conspirator had been found and jailed.
So the captain had his bed back, and Hild didn’t find out what was ‘underground’ but did return slightly hesitantly to the Dragon. Alone.
She had never been alone there. Always there had been Bronaa, and in the early days, Paega. Hild didn’t like that feeling much.
Aye, she dismissed the sullen woman her husband had hired to serve, and aye, she had Seldis back in her employ within the week. But it was different. She felt more alone than she ever had. Paega had always come and gone as he pleased. She had grown used to that. But this last time… oh her folly… she had truly believed he was back for good.
Captain Denholm had asked her if she cared to visit her husband, two days after his arrest. It seemed he had confessed much, so she would not be needed as a witness after all. ‘Poor Paega,’ she had thought. ‘You never were one to really stand against threats. And the Captain would certainly have been threatening.’
She had thanked Denholm for the offer, but declined. She had nothing further to say.
So she sat upon her own bed at last. Still she was shaking inside over what had happened.
Never again would she share her bed, she promised herself. Never again would she trust Paega if he was ever released, nor likely any other.
Placing the candle holder on the table by her bed, she moved her legs up under the covers, pulling them tight against the chill night, and snuffed out her candle. The light flickered for a moment, then went out.
