Although her sicknesses grew harsh, joy shone from her. Again his behavior was strange, for he seemed to care less about his get” that she bore than about her own well-being. He even oversaw what she ate, providing her with things like out-land fruits regardless of season though forbidding her as much salt as she was wont to. She obeyed gladly, saying this showed he loved her.
Meanwhile life went on in the neighborhood, and death. At the burials and grave-ales, nobody made bold to speak freely with Carl; he was too close to the unknown. On the other hand, the heads of household who had chosen him were taken aback when he refused the honor of being the man hereabouts who would swive the next Spring Queen.
Remembering what else he had done and was doing on their behalf, they got over that.
Warmth; harvest; bleakness; rebirth; summer again; and Jorith was brought to her childbed.
Long was her toil. She suffered the pains bravely, but the women who attended her became very glum. The elves would not have liked it had a man seen her during that time. Bad enough how Carl had demanded unheard-of cleanliness. They could only hope that he knew what he was about.
He waited it out in the main room of his house. When callers came, he had mead and drink set forth as was right, but stayed curt in his speech.
When they left at nightfall, he did not sleep but sat alone in the dark until sunrise. Now and then the midwife or a helper would shuffle out to tell him how the birth was going. By the light of the lamp she bore, she saw how his glance sought the door he kept locked.
Late in the second day, the midwife found him among his friends. Silence fell upon them. Then that which she bore in her arms let out a wail – and Winnithar a shout. Carl rose, his nostrils white.
The woman knelt before him, unfolded the blanket, and on the earthen floor, at the father’s feet, laid a man-child, still bloody but lustily sprattling and crying. If Carl did not take the babe up onto his knee, she would carry it into the woods and leave it for the wolves. He never stopped to see if aught might be wrong with it. He snatched the wee form to him while he croaked, “Jorith, how fares Jorith?”
“Weak,” said the midwife. “Go to her now if you will.”
Carl gave her back his son and hastened to the bedroom. The women who were there stood aside. He bent over Jorith. She lay white, sweat-clammy, hollowed out. But when she saw her man, she reached feebly upward and smiled the ghost of a smile. “Dagobert,” she whispered. That was the name, old in her family, that she had wished for, were this a boy.
“Dagobert, yes,” Carl said low. Unseemly though it was in sight of the rest, he bent to kiss her.
She lowered her lids and sank back onto the straw. “Thank you,” came from her throat, barely to be heard. “The son of a god.”
“No-”
Suddenly Jorith shuddered. For a moment she clutched at her brow. Her eyes opened again. The pupils were fixed and wide. She grew bonelessly limp. Breath rattled in and out.
Carl straightened, whirled, and sped from the room. At the locked door, he took forth his key and went inside. It banged behind him.
Salvalindis moved to her daughter’s side. “She is dying,” she said flatly. “Can his witchcraft save her? Should it?”
The forbidden door swung back. Carl came out, and another. He forgot to close it. Men glimpsed a thing of metal. Some remembered what he had ridden who flew above the battlefields. They huddled close, gripped amulets or drew signs in the air.
Carl’s companion was a woman, though clad in rainbow-shimmery breeks and tunic. Her countenance was of a kind never seen before – broad and high in the cheekbones like a Hun’s, but short of nose, coppery-golden of hue, beneath straight blue-black hair. She held a box by its handle.
The two dashed to the bedroom. “Out, out!” Carl roared, and chased the Gothic women before him like leaves before a storm.