But Lavastine blinked. His pale hard gaze faltered. He batted at his face, as if to brush away a fly. “Just the elder children,” he said, sounding uncertain, almost bewildered. But the moment was brief.
Aldegund’s mouth trembled but she did not give way to tears. Lord Geoffrey’s two children by his first wife were taken away. Lavastine sheathed his sword and glanced at Alain, marking him with some confusion. Then he shook his head and stiffened, losing all expression. He snapped his fingers and the hounds, swarming together because they were tied to the leash, approached him, licking his fingers and fawning at his boots. He took the leash, turned, and with no further speech to anyone left the great hall.
They celebrated the Feast of St. Sormas at the holding, but it was a somber feast. Only Lavastine and his men-at-arms ate at the banquet tables, served grudgingly but without protest by the servants of Geoffrey and Aldegund. Geoffrey was confined to the tower cell and Aldegund and her retinue to the loft upstairs.
In the morning Lavastine allowed the women to leave with only enough food for the fiveday’s journey east into Wendish lands, where lay the estate of Lady Alberga, young Aldegund’s mother. It was a pathetic procession that set out—Aldegund, the infant, and her two kinswomen, as well as the wet nurse and only two serving-women. How could anyone be expected to know she was a lady, with such a paltry retinue? Aldegund was not even allowed to keep her own horses but had to ride on the back of a donkey.
Geoffrey was not well enough to travel; the wounds he had sustained from the hounds were bad, although likely not mortal. He was left in the care of frater, with orders that he vacate the holding as soon as he could travel.
Lavastine appointed a chatelain from among his own serving-men, a man born of free parents who had placed himself in the count’s service in hopes of gaining something more than the youngest son’s share of his parents’ farmstead. If Sabella’s rebellion turned out to her advantage, this man might well find himself steward of a good holding. If it did not …
But as Alain watched wagons of provisions trundling out of the holding—vegetables and legumes taken from the storerooms, shields, good spearheads and strong wooden shafts, a few swords, old helmets and new, cloth for tunics and tabards, milled grain, leather, and five small coffers filled with the silver and gold that constituted both Geoffrey’s movable wealth, brought to the marriage as his groom’s gift, and Aldegund’s portion of her family’s wealth—he saw how Sabella improved her chances of winning the throne by this victory.