CHAPTER 8-1

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

Summer 500

I didn’t need to hear the words to know what everyone was saying. I sensed it in their pitying glances, saw it cloaked in the eyes of courtiers, scented it on the wind that carried the servants’ secrets beyond the alleyways, and in my darkest moments, I even tasted it on my husband’s tongue. In the alehouses and barracks, ripening fields and desolate moors, they all whispered the same refrain—“the queen is barren.”

Two years had passed since my children were born dead, and still my womb refused to allow life to take root. Grainne had assured me from the moment I regained consciousness that there was no reason I could not have many more children, but even then I had been suspicious. As a midwife, I had on occasion lied to a grieving mother, especi……