To Love Again - Bertrice Small [65]
“We’re alike, Berikos, aren’t we? It isn’t just Brenna that makes me who I am. It is you as well. We are quick with our tongues, and have a surfeit of pride to boot.” She patted her rounded belly. “The gods only know what this great-grandchild of yours will be like.”
He half wheezed, half cackled at her remark. “Guud!” he said.
“Good?” she answered him, and he nodded vigorously, a chuckling noise coming from his throat. “You think so, do you? Well, we shall see after Lugh’s feast if you are right,” Cailin replied with a small smile.
Before Cailin and Wulf departed the next morning, Ceara came to her and said, “You have made Berikos very happy, my child. Your mother would be proud of you and of what you have done. I think it has helped him to make peace with himself, and with Kyna.”
Cailin nodded. “Why not?” she said. “Last night the doors between the worlds were open. Perhaps not as widely as at Samain, but open nonetheless. I felt my mother would want me to be generous toward Berikos. It is strange, is it not, Ceara? Just a few weeks ago Berikos was strong and vital, the lord of his world. Now he is naught but a weak and sad old man. How quickly the gods render their judgment when they decide that the time has come for it.”
“Life is fragile, my child, and appallingly swift, as you will soon find. One day you are filled with the juices of fiery youth and nothing is impossible! Then just as suddenly, you are a dried-up old husk with the same desires, but no will left to accomplish the impossible.” She laughed. “You have a little time yet, I think. Go with your man now. Send for me when the child is due. Maeve and I will come to help you.”
Cailin took the time to stop by the bench where her grandfather sat in the sunshine of the May morning. She bent to kiss his white head, and taking his hand in hers, gave it a squeeze. “Farewell, Grandfather,” she said quietly. “I will bring you the child after it is birthed.”
She and Wulf returned to their own home, and Cailin, finding more strength in herself than she would have thought, helped to seal the walls of the new barn with mud daub and wattle while Wulf worked in their fields with the servants. It was a good summer, neither too dry nor too wet. In the orchards the fruit grew round and hung heavy upon the boughs of the trees. The grain ripened slowly while the hay was cut, dried, and finally stored in the barns for the coming winter.
The cattle grew fat, their herds having increased quite sizably that spring with the birth of many calves. In the meadows the sheep had multiplied, too, and shearing time was drawing near. Cailin, sitting outside the hall one warm day, looked across the shimmering fields contentedly. For a moment it appeared as if nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. It was a different time, and she was beginning to sense it most strongly.
One evening she and Wulf lay upon their backs on the hillside looking up at the stars. “Why do you never mention your family?” she asked him. “I am to bear your child, yet I know nothing of you.”
“You are my family,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“No!” she persisted. “What of your parents? Did you have brothers and sisters? What has happened to them? Are they in Britain?”
“My father died before I was born,” he told her. “My mother died when I was just past two. I remember neither of them. They were young, and I was their only child.”
“But who raised you?” she said. She was sorry he had no close relatives, but on the other hand it meant that he was all hers.
“Kin raised me, in my village along a river in Germania. I was passed from one relation to another like a lovable but unwanted animal. They were not unkind,