But Dori also ignored his command. “It’s you,” she said, looking at the boy as if seeing a ghost. “I thought you got on the ship that night. The ship to—”
“Fallen Angels Abbey,” the man’s voice from earlier finished, and a tall shadow appeared from behind the rubble and stepped to the boy’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Constantine feared in that moment that he would faint, for the man’s arm was tattooed with swirls and points of black.
“Adrian?” he choked.
Into the torchlight at Adrian’s side stepped Maisie Lindsey. Then, on his other side, Valentine and Mary and Valentina; Isra and Roman, Lou perched on his wide shoulder. Constantine’s blurry gaze flew up to Benningsgate’s ragged battlements as torches sprang into sight, held by soldiers whose fealty Constantine could not fathom.
He gasped a breath and looked back to the group of his brothers, his family, spearheaded by the little blond boy staring at Constantine. A boy Theodora somehow already knew, had sent away on a ship bound for Melk?
Adrian bent to one knee and took the torch from the boy’s clutching fingers in such a gentle manner that it caused Constantine to shake his head as he tried to protect what little of his sanity remained.
Only Patrice’s bones had been found in the ruin of the hall, beneath the single window.
If Lady Patrice had any consciousness in her, she would have tried to escape the hall with Master Christian by any means she could.
No...
“Papa,” the boy said, clearly, firmly, looking straight at Constantine.
Constantine heard his sword clatter to the road. “Christian?” he wheezed on a sob.
And then, as if in a dream delivered directly from heaven, the boy’s feet were pounding down the road as he ran toward Constantine, and once again he was brought to his knees before the ruins of his home.
But this time Christian was in his arms.
Constantine had not wept as he wept then since he was a boy much younger than the one he now held. His ragged sobs echoed and echoed off the stones; he shouted his gut-wrenching joy with his weeping, thanking God through his tears and his trembling for this miracle of all miracles. The greatest gift he’d ever been given, now received twice.
* * *
Theodora walked toward the man and the boy in the road, her own face awash with tears, as the group from the ruin came forward and they all met around Constantine and Christian. Dori felt conspicuous in this crowd of people who all seemed to know one another and in which she was the stranger.
Constantine stood, Christian still in his arms, and the boy caught sight of her. He leaned away from Constantine and patted his shoulder. Constantine turned so that both father and son regarded Dori.
“Is that your baby?” Christian asked her.
Dori nodded.
“I’m glad. A boy needs a mother,” he said.
Dori smiled. “Even if she’s not a good one?”
Christian reached the arm around Constantine’s neck toward Dori and she stepped closer, reaching up to grasp his fingers in her own. But the boy tugged on her hand until his arm was around her shoulders, too, and he pressed his hot, damp cheek to hers.
“Thank you,” Christian whispered. “For saving my father.”
And then Constantine’s arm also came around her, embracing all three of them. As Christian pulled himself aright, Constantine stepped back in order to look down into Dori’s face.
“You put him on a ship to Melk?”
Dori shook her head. “I just gave him a coin.”
The tattooed man, Adrian, spoke. “It was a Chastellet coin, Stan.”
Constantine looked back to her. “You saved his life, Dori. You saved my son.”
“No,” Dori said, unwilling to further usurp the place that needed recognition. She looked at Christian. “Your mother saved your life, didn’t she?”
