7th December 1102

Kelgar stood before the door for a long time before he finally had the nerve to open it. He was not the sort of man to hesitate, to think before he acted. Kelgar was a man who barged in, who took what he wanted with both hands and did not relax his grip until he so chose. That was the only way, he would grow bored or it must be wrestled from between his strong fingers. So it had been with Polina. Osras had ripped her from his clenched fist like the favourite toy horse, or the tastiest morsel. He had always taken what Kelgar wanted most. But it was never without a fight.

But for some reason now his grasp was weak, feeble like a man who had just woken from a deep slumber. He tried to flex his fingers, to curl them into the shape he knew they must be to hold as tightly as he could but they were limp and he knew it was all sliding away. There was nothing he could do about it.

He took a deep breath and knocked roughly on the heavy, wooden door.

“Come in,” a soft voice called and he pushed it open.

She was sitting beside the fire, her knees curled up against her chest as she watched Rothdyn weakly kicking his newborn legs while Kendrick patted ineffectually at his chubby, velvet-clad knees. Her dress had ridden up to reveal one perfect, milky-white ankle above the top of her boot.

Kendrick gazed up at him with a drool edged smile, his grey eyes curious.

Kelgar did not like to look too long at those eyes, so similar where they to his own. Perhaps he should be glad, apparently he had royal blood in his veins after all. But that would only mean that he was not his father’s true son, that Osras had finally taken that away from him too. Everything was slipping, slithering through his fingers like ash.

Lyiss half-turned to see who had come through the door. He tried to smile but failed, simply unable to remember which muscles must tense in order to make such a thing occur.

“Mistress Elmvarn,” he acknowledged her with a simple nod, his fingers curling into tiny shivering fists beside his thighs.

She hastily rose to her feet, stumbling on her dress which had tangled around her slender legs.
He strode across the room, eager to close the gap between them. In that space lay too much uncertainty, empty hands stretching hopelessly towards her.

But once he stood before her, though he could have reached out his arm and taken her soft, warm hand in his own, he found he did not know what to do.

“Terrible weather we’re having ain’t it,” he mumbled, inwardly thumping himself for being such a lout.

So Osras wasn’t here to do it, no matter, he could do it perfectly well all on his very own.

She nodded silently, her eyes wide.

He leaned forward, “It seems we’re going to have a cold winter. The red berries were out on the trees yew know.”

What the hell was he talking about? Housewives gossip, where had he even heard that?

She shrank away from him, her back bumping up against the screen behind her so that it lurched ominously and he thought for a moment it would clatter to the floor. It did not, and all that was left was more of that pesky silence he seemed so ready to fill with mindless drabble.

“A lot of babies hanging about here aren’t there,” he said ineffectually.

More mindless pratter, he had lost his balls after all. Perhaps Osras had finally taken them too. His brother probably needed a new set since his own were so tightly gripped in Polina’s relentless grasp.

“Anyway, I thought yew might be wanting some company.”

Something was wrong with him. He knew how to talk to women, how to make them giggle, how to make them swoon and finally how to take them in his arms and hold them for a while. With Lyiss it was different. All his arsenal of charming lines and smouldering gazes availed nought. She only shuffled timidly further from his desperate grasp.

“Oh,” she nodded, her eyes lowered, not meeting his, “that was kind. But really, I have plenty of company with these two. They are better company that you would expect.”

He watched her as she spoke, the shapes that her mouth made as she carefully sounded out the words. Her long hair slid limply from her shoulder falling strand by strand to curtain her face. Her shoulders were hunched upwards, shortening her slender neck as though she were a turtle trying desperately to hide in a shell that had suddenly gone missing.

He couldn’t stand it, this feeling of uselessness. Kelgar was used to knowing exactly what a women wanted from him, and knowing that he could deliver it. He did not know what she wanted.

He took a deep, rattling breath and leaped, both hands blindly outstretched.

“The thing is, Mistress Elmvarn. I care for you a great deal and what I would like to know is whether, perhaps yew thought yew might care for me.”

There, he said it. No winking, no sly grins. Just him, Kelgar and his stupidly pounding heart.

She did not reply, her expression turning inward, her body curving away from his so that if possible she seemed even smaller.

His hands floundered in the hollow space, grasping at the air, coming back empty and cold.

There was a heartrending wail which for a moment he strangely thought was his heart screaming, but then he realised it was the high-pitched cry of the baby.

He stared down at his feet where Kendrick was gazing up at them with wide, innocent eyes though his foot was kicking at the baby’s soft, exposed belly.

“Oh,” Lyiss cried, as though suddenly awoken from a deep slumber, “Kendrick no!”

At the sound of her chiding voice Kendrick began to shriek too, and the sound of their wailing voices mingled into a dreadful chorus that rang in his ears and all but set his teeth vibrating.

“I’m sorry, I have disturbed yew from your duties. And mine await me. I will take no more of your time.”

He fled from the room, from the sound of their cries, from her awkward expression, out into the icy cold. It had begun to snow, tiny flakes swirling from above and melting on his face like wet kisses.

He was so stupid, he thought with a sudden grimace, his hands clenched finally into angry fists. How could he think that he could have ever been part of her world. He had strode in there, into the warm where there were velvet-clad babies and rich tapestries, his muddy boots leaving a trail on the fine rug beneath his clomping feet.

He was not part of her world and he never would be. He stumbled down the stairs, striding through the gate.

He gazed up at the grey sky with a filthy look. Now he had guard duty. What a festering sod of a day.

Elmvarn, Shildfrith, The Royal Family