“She’s the heart of this place, sweet Iva,” the matron says. “It will be a cold winter without her here and who will tend the pups?”
“Pups?” I ask and that gets a small, knowing smile from her as if she realizes how rare my voice is.
“She was helping Fern whelp a litter when you arrived but it’s her first litter and dogs can lose a few the first time if they aren’t helped. They’re the king’s dogs, you know. His hunting dogs, though they’re raised here.”
I nod. Perhaps that’s where Hessa has gone off to.
“They need care,” the matron says. “And I have none to spare for it with Iva leaving.”
I swallow to prepare to speak. As always, I think hard on what I want to say before I open my mouth.
“There’s a boy with us,” I say.
She nods. And, of course, she knows because she will have assigned him a space to sleep.
“He needs to be fed,” I say, not sure how to say what I need to say but she’s still nodding, so I twist my jerkin in my hands and force the rest out. “He could stay in her place if you have someone to guide him.”
The boy isn’t mine to take or leave. But if I can do this much for him – give him a home in a castle, at least for a little while – then I’ll take whatever consequences are dealt out.
“Why are you taking our Iva?” the matron asks, and I wish she’d said yes or no instead. I don’t like things hanging in the air waiting to be finished.
“To end a war,” I reply eventually, and I startle when I feel her old hand on my arm.
“I’ll take care of your boy, Sir Knight,” she says. “And you’ll look after my girl.”
I can’t meet her eyes. I can’t nod. But she seems to take my agreement as granted. It feels like an escape when I leave her to go find the boy – Jarl – and Hessa.
They’re both in the kennels. I find them after searching the stables and getting hot snuffling greetings from the horses. I turn a corner to where the dogs each have an open stall. Their heads lift when I walk by, but they make no fuss about it. They’re pretty dogs, all sleek lines and beauty. It does the heart good to see them.
I turn a corner and find the boy and my dog in a warm stall filled with clean straw. There’s a sleeping mother dog with four puppies curled against her belly on one side of the stall, and a glowing brazier full of hot embers on the other. In between, Jarl is fast asleep, his young body curled against Hessa. She looks up and lolls a tongue at me, but her head is in the lap of the girl I’m going to deliver to a monster.
I think I smile at them, but I don’t know. I feel torn up inside like a man gutted on the battlefield. I’m happy for Jarl. I can see his future – for at least the next few months – and it’s full of nights like this. Good nights in the warmth with a full belly. But the girl smiling at me now will pay for it.
She motions me to sit, and I start to shake my head no, but I can’t finish it when I see the pleading in her eyes, so I sit on the straw opposite her, so tired I want nothing more than to curl up in the straw like Jarl and fall asleep. The heat of the brazier warms me right through, but I must not relax completely. There are too many things I hold in tight that must not come unwound.
“He’s happy here,” Iva whispers.
Her smile gives her face a friendly warmth. I can’t stop watching it. I’ve barely seen a woman these past few years. I’ve certainly not seen one close to my age, except for the Lady Fliad this afternoon, and she was not like this. She was cold and hard and beautiful in the way the ice is over the river. This woman is soft and warm, and her big eyes are full of kindness. I have not seen much kindness. This much of it hurts to be near. I want to shy away from it.
I try to form words and have to try again.
“He will stay with your dogs,” I say eventually, and her smile widens. I didn’t think it could do that. It hurts worse than the time I took that spearhead to the thigh. Hurts just like that wound where it burns for a moment and then aches afterward.
“That’s good,” she says, shifting her hand to rest on the boy’s head for a moment before returning to Hessa. My mother used to do that when I was a boy. My throat feels tight.
I nod insensibly. I can’t remember what we were talking about.
“It’s a strange thing to put everything I own into a small bag and ride away. I’ve lived here my whole life, you know,” she says, and I don’t have anything to say in reply, but I don’t want her to stop. Her voice washes me like warm water on a soft fleece.
I try a nod. It seems to work.
“I made everything you see here,” she says with a pensive smile. “The baskets along that wall. The blanket. The wooden cups and dishes. I like working with my hands.” She colors a little as if that were a confession. I’ve heard confessions that kept me up all night after the confessor was long dead. She shouldn’t blush at this. “I cannot take it with me.”
It’s not right that she can’t. Don’t brides usually arrive with dowries? Things from their homes? I don’t clearly recall, but there was some fuss about how to fill the ships when the princess was married.
“But I will miss the dogs most,” she says, and I would have known that without her telling me by how she looks at them. She rubs Hessa behind the ears. “Is this dog yours?”
I nod, swallowing as I prepare to speak, but she carries on.
