Cursed in the Blood: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery by Sharan Newman Page B

hummed a song from Champagne. The children didn’t look up as their mothers entered.
    The tears Adalisa had fought so hard to control came rushing out. Quickly she went to her clothes chest, opened it and began
rummaging in its depths as if looking for something. There the tears fell from her face onto wool acrid with dried herbs.
    Willa stopped her song when they entered. She smiled at Catherine.
    “James is awake, Mistress,” she said. “The other baby is sleeping still. Did you have a good dinner?”
    There was no answer to that. Catherine took out the bread and gave it to the girl, then bent over James’s cradle. Her son looked up at her with his father’s eyes.
    “What cursed place have we come to?” she murmured, as she lifted him and settled herself to give him his dinner.
    Anna and Sibilla watched her with something between contempt and wonder. Catherine ignored them. She was used to the belief that only peasants breastfed. But all the scholars agreed that weaknesses and flaws in the character could be drawn in with strange milk, so she held to her determination. Edgar had assured her that King David’s mother had nursed all her own children. If a sainted queen could, she told people, so could she.
    The women lost interest in her oddity after a moment and retreated to a corner to discuss the events of the afternoon. Adalisa emerged from the woolens, her emotions conquered. She seated herself on the rushes next to Catherine and gestured to Margaret to join her.
    The child came, still clutching her new toys. Adalisa wrapped her arms around her and rubbed her face against Margaret’s soft, bright curls. Then she gave Catherine a rueful smile.
    “There are too many men in this family,” she announced.
    Catherine smiled back.
    “Perhaps that’s why we really send our sons out for fostering,” she suggested. “They’re too much like their fathers to all live together in unity.”
    Adalisa nodded with a sigh. “Now, I imagine you want to know what all that was about.”
    “Among other things,” Catherine answered.
    Adalisa gave her a puzzled glance, but went on to explain the gist of the argument that had gone on below. Catherine listened while James fed contentedly.
    “I see,” she said when the story was ended. “It’s strange. I don’t know the customs of this place, but it appears to me as if these deeds
are the act of someone deliberately trying to demean Lord Waldeve. His sons murdered and mutilated like felons, his horses returned as if worthless. Is this usual behavior in Scottish feuds?”
    “Not in the least,” Adalisa said. “Revenge is brutal here, even with the efforts of King David to make people bring their grievances to his court. But it’s also straightforward. A man has a grudge against his neighbor and he kills him in the open and sticks his head above the gate for all to see. This … this desecration, it’s unnatural.”
    Catherine agreed. “And you have no idea who would want to behave so?”
    It seemed to her that Adalisa hesitated.
    “No,” she said. “My husband has never felt the need for friends, but in his own way, he is honorable. He has never betrayed his lord, which is almost a miracle in these times of shifting allegiances. He isn’t kind to those under him, but he is just, I believe. He’s more cruel to his family than to his slaves.”
    Catherine had seen enough in her short time at Wedderlie to believe this. She shifted James to the other breast and asked another question.
    “Why do you think the horses were returned to Hexham? Where is it?”
    “Southwest of here,” Adalisa answered. “Just past the Roman wall.”
    “Is it in Scotland or England?” Catherine asked.
    “That depends on whom you ask,” Adalisa said. “At the moment, King David and his son, Earl Henry, have the greatest claim. But the church of Hexham is under the protection of the archbishop of York.”
    “Does Edgar’s family have any connection there?”
    Again a hesitation. Was