In work there was healing and, as the year finally began to turn toward winter, Anne de Bohun pushed herself ever harder so that she would have no time or energy to think. Each day she joined the women from the village on the threshing floor in the largest of her barns and, like them, flailed the wheat to detach the ripe grain from the husk. Then, with all the women standing in a circle, together they tossed the grain to separate it from the chaff. These women had become her friends because she never asked them to do what she did not do herself.
Each evening saw the chatelaine of Herrard Great Hall stretch her weary back as she shoveled the last of the clean grain into sacks she’d sewn herself. And, because she was hungry, truly hungry at last, she ate ravenously at night—which pleased Deborah and made Leif smile, to see her so greedy—and fell asleep in front of the kitchen fire as she sewed yet more sacks, oblivious of her itchy clothes. More than once Leif carried Anne up to her own great bed and placed her, fast asleep, beside her dreaming son.
One night Deborah was settled before the fire in the flagged kitchen, a pile of sacks beside her, as Leif joined her. “Ale, Leif?”
The man sat beside the old woman on the settle and gave her a grateful nod. He said nothing as he drank deep. Then, wiping his hand across his mouth, he ventured an opinion. “She’s better, I think.”
Deborah squinted in the light from the fire; it was getting harder to thread the big sacking needle. That was a worrying sign of old age. “Can you see to do this, Leif?”
“Of course.” Like all seamen he was good with rope and deft with his fingers. And what was this thread but a jute rope made very small? “Do you agree with me, Deborah, about Anne?”
Taking back the needle, Deborah flashed a glance at her companion. “In body, I agree she’s mending well. Time is the solution to…”
Leif’s face was grim. “Edward Plantagenet.”
The old woman laid a hand on the man’s knee. “Will you wait, Leif?”
He smiled faintly. “What choice do I have?”
“All the choice in the world.”
They both turned. Anne was standing, barefooted but dressed in her working kirtle, at the bottom of the stone stairs that led down to the kitchen from the rooms above.
“You were asleep.” Leif stood, abashed. He was embarrassed to think Anne had heard them discussing her.
“I woke.” Anne was short. She would not tell them about the dream: wolves and eagles fighting. Always, every night. She spoke urgently. “Leif, I would not hold you here for the world. You have been so good to us, helped us so much. We have no right to—”
Leif put his hands on Anne’s shoulders and gently pressed her to sit in his place beside Deborah.
“Yes, you do. Every right. Mathew Cuttifer asked me to come here and make sure you were well prepared for winter. There’s still a lot to do. I’m not leaving. Not unless you want me to.”
Anne shook her head. “No. Never.”
Why had she said that? She smiled at him, embarrassed. “I mean, it’s true. We do need you here. We can’t finish all that needs to be done without you. Can we, Deborah?”
Her foster mother nodded placidly, eyes on her work. This was between the two of them; she did not speak.
“Ale, Lady Anne?” Leif diverted Anne’s confusion with instinctive kindness.
Anne stretched and shook her head. “I’m aching in every muscle and bone. And itching!”
Now Deborah spoke. “It’s the chaff. It gets into everything. You need to wash it off. I’ll boil water for you and you can bathe in front of the fire. You’ll sleep better, I promise you that.”
Leif swallowed the last of his ale hastily. “Well then, I’ll be off to my bed.” And that was what he intended to do. And yet, later, he found an excuse to wander past the kitchen on his way to inspect the horses—to see if they’d been fed properly, that was what he told himself—and happened to cast one glance through the small kitchen window, which was open to let the steam out.
He saw Anne from the back, naked but for the bath sheet wound around her hips, holding her arms high as Deborah gently washed her body. It was just a glimpse—the line of one shoulder, the supple curve of her back as she bent, the grace of an arm as she held it extended. Love and pity overwhelmed Leif. It was not right that her ribs were so clear beneath her skin; not right that grief had made Anne so slender. He fed the confused horses a second supper that night, thinking deeply. He knew what Anne de Bohun needed, even if she did not. She needed him.
It was his task to make her see that.