Hastings looked to Severin. He looked thoughtful. If she didn’t know of the deep wound in his shoulder she wouldn’t guess there was anything wrong with him at all. She waited, swirling the liquid about in the goblet. It smelled foul but tasted sweet, the flower mixed with the ale. The man was staring at that goblet. She didn’t blame him. Still, she just waited. It was Severin’s decision. She wondered if he would simply slip his dagger into the man’s chest.
Severin said, “Give him the potion, Hastings.”
She came down on her knees and gently tilted the goblet into the man’s mouth. “Drink slowly,” she said. “Very slowly. Then the men will carry you into the shade and you will sleep for a while. When you awake, your belly will be calm.”
When the man slept propped up against the side of a pigsty, Severin said to all the men, “I am releasing him. He will take a message to Richard de Luci. Graelam, come with me whilst I write the message.”
He knew how to write. She wasn’t really surprised. She supposed nothing he did could surprise her. Actually, she was relieved. It meant that she wouldn’t have to keep a close eye on her father’s steward, Torric. Her father had also known how to write and he’d been proud of that feet, telling her that a man shouldn’t be at the mercy of another man, particularly when it came to goods and money.
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She trailed after the men into the great hall. She wondered if she would have released the man or stuck a dagger in his gullet. Her father would have killed him with great relish, denying him the curing potion, very probably taunting him with it until he stuck his sword in his chest.
It was late that day when they released the man. He looked toward Hastings, his eyes bright with gratitude. Had he already forgotten that it had been she who’d brought on his vomiting in the first place?
“I expect an answer from your master on the morrow,” Severin said. “If he refuses to exercise his reason, I will kill him and then I will raze his castle.”
Graelam said, “Before Severin dispatches Richard de Luci to hell, our lady here will force a potion down his throat that will make him vomit until his head bursts open.”
The man paled and nodded. After he rode from Oxborough, they buried Lord Fawke of Trent, Earl of Oxborough, in the plot beside the wife he’d had killed eight years before. Father Carreg spoke the words. The men were silent. Chickens squawked in the background, pigs rutted in the midden, cows mooed from beyond the wall.
Then Father Carreg raised his voice. “I hereby give Lord Fawke’s sword to his heir and successor, Lord Severin of Langthorne-Trent, Baron Louges and third Earl of Oxborough.”
Stverin drew the sword from its sheath. He raised it high over his head as he spoke in a loud, clear voice, “I accept my responsibilities and hold them as dear as I will hold my possessions. I will accept fealty from all my men before the end of summer.”
There was loud cheering, not just from the men but from the women as well. She could even hear shrieks from the children. Several dogs barked loudly. The entire inner bailey pulsed with sound and life. And acceptance. Of him.
For the first time, Hastings realized to the very depths of her that her life would never be the same again. Everything had changed. There was no going back. There was a new master. He was her master.
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All owed fealty to him now and to him alone. She knew he would travel to her father’s three other castles-now his possessions-accepting oaths of fealty, determining which men would act in his stead during his absences. She wondered if any of her father’s vassals would object to Severin’s rule.
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Severin paused a moment outside the bedchamber door. He’d had her father’s large bedchamber thoroughly cleaned, surprised even as he’d given the order to Dame Agnes that Hastings hadn’t already seen to it. Regardless, he did not doubt that her women had told her about the cleaning. But still she hadn’t been there awaiting him when he’d left Graelam.