I shut the door behind me, the cool darkness of the corridor engulfed me. The floor was cold. An errant draught wandered the hallways; I sighed. Withywoods was a rambling place that required constant upkeep and repair. There was always something to do, something to busy Holder Badgerlock. I smiled to myself. What, did I wish that Chade’s midnight summons had been an order for me to assassinate someone? Better far that tomorrow’s project was consulting with Revel about a blocked chimney in the parlour.
I padded hastily along as I backtracked through the sleeping house. When I reached my bedchamber, I eased the door open silently and as quietly closed it behind me. My robe fell to the floor again as I slid under the coverlets. Molly’s warm flesh and sweet scent beckoned me. I shivered, waiting for the blankets to warm the chill from me and trying not to wake her. Instead, she rolled to face me and drew me into her embrace. Her small warm feet perched on top of my icy ones and she nestled her head under my chin and on my chest.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ I whispered.
‘You didn’t. I woke up and you weren’t here. I was waiting for you.’ She spoke quietly but not in a whisper.
‘Sorry,’ I said. She waited. ‘It was Chade Skilling to me.’
I felt but did not hear her sigh. ‘All is well?’ she asked me quietly.
‘Nothing wrong,’ I assured her. ‘Just a sleepless old man looking for some company.’
‘Mm.’ She made a soft sound of agreement. ‘I can understand that well. I do not sleep as well as I did when I was young.’
‘As true for me. We’re all getting older.’
She sighed and melted into me. I put my arms around her and closed my eyes.
She cleared her throat softly. ‘As long as you’re not asleep … if you’re not too tired.’ She moved suggestively against me, and as always, my breath caught in my throat. I smiled into the darkness. This was my Molly, as I knew her of old. Lately she had been so pensive and quiet that I had feared I had somehow hurt her feelings. But when I had asked her, she had shaken her head, looking down and smiling to herself. ‘I’m not ready to tell you, yet,’ she had teased me. Earlier in the day, I had walked into the room where she processed her honey and made the candles she created for our personal use. I had caught her standing motionless, the long taper she had been dipping dangling forgotten from her fingers as she stared off into the distance.
She cleared her throat, and I realized I was the one who was wool-gathering now. I kissed the side of her throat and she made a sound almost like a purr.
I gathered her closer. ‘I am not too tired. And I hope never to be that old.’
For a time, in that room, we were as young as we had ever been, save that with the experience of years of each other, there was no awkwardness, no hesitation. I once knew of a minstrel who bragged of having had a thousand women, one time each. He would never know what I knew, that to have one woman a thousand times, and each time find in her a different delight is far better. I knew now what gleamed in the eyes of old couples when they saw one another across a room. More than once, I had met Molly’s glance at a crowded family gathering, and known from the bend of her smile and her fingers touching her mouth exactly what she had in mind for us once we were alone. My familiarity with her was a more potent love elixir than any potion sold by a hedge-witch in the market.
Simple and good was our lovemaking, and very thorough. Afterwards, her hair was netted across my chest, her breasts pressed warm against my side. I drifted, warm and content. She spoke softly by my ear, the breath of her words tickling.
‘My love?’
‘Um?’
‘We’re going to have a baby.’
My eyes flew open. Not with the joy I had once hoped to feel, but with the shock of dismay. I took three slow breaths, trying to find words, trying to find thoughts. I felt as if I had stepped from the warm lapping of water at a river’s edge into the cold deep current. Tumbled and drowning. I said nothing.
‘Are you awake?’ she persisted.
‘I am. Are you? Are you talking in your sleep, my dear?’ I wondered if she had slipped off into a dream, and was perhaps recalling another man and another time when she had whispered such momentous words and they had been true.
‘I’m awake.’ And sounding slightly irritated with me, she added, ‘Did you hear what I told you?’
‘I did.’ I steeled myself. ‘Molly. You know that can’t be so. You yourself told me that your days of bearing were past now. It has been years since—’
‘And I was wrong!’ There was no mistaking the annoyance in her voice now. She seized my wrist and set my hand to her belly. ‘You must have seen that I’m getting larger. I’ve felt the baby move, Fitz. I didn’t want to say anything until I was absolutely certain. And now I am. I know it’s peculiar, I know it must seem impossible for me to be pregnant so many years after my courses have stopped flowing. But I know I am not mistaken. I’ve felt the quickening. I carry your child, Fitz. Before this winter is out, we will have a baby.’
‘Oh, Molly,’ I said. My voice shook and as I gathered her closer, my hands were shaking. I held her, kissed her brow and her eyes.
She slipped her arms around me. ‘I knew you would be pleased. And astonished,’ she said happily. She settled against me. ‘I’ll have the servants move the cradle from the attic. I went looking for it a few days ago. It’s still there. It’s fine old oak, with not a joint loose in it. Finally, it will be filled! Patience would have been so thrilled to know there will be a Farseer’s child at Withywoods. But I won’t use her nursery. It’s too far from our bedchamber. I think I will make one of the rooms on the ground floor into a special nursery for me and for our child. Perhaps the Sparrow Chamber. I know that as I get heavier, I will not want to climb the stairs too often …’
She went on, breathlessly detailing her plans, speaking of the screens she would move from Patience’s old sewing room, and how the tapestries and rugs must be cleaned well, and talking of lamb’s wool she wished spun fine and dyed especially for our child. I listened to her, speechless with terror. She was drifting away from me, her mind gone to a place where mine could not follow. I had seen her ageing in the last few years. I’d noticed the swelling of her knuckles, and how she sometimes paused on the stairs to catch her breath. I’d heard her, more than once, call Tavia the kitchen maid by her mother’s name. Lately Molly would begin a task, and then wander off, leaving it half done. Or she would enter a room, look around and ask me, ‘Now what was it I came here to get?’
We had laughed about such lapses. But there was nothing funny about this slipping of her mind. I held her close as she prattled on about the plans she had obviously been making for months. My arms wrapped her and held her, but I feared I was losing her.
And then I would be alone.
It is common knowledge that once a woman has passed her child-bearing years, she becomes more vulnerable to all sorts of ailments of the flesh. As her monthly courses dwindle and then cease,
