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straight across. There he is with Geoffrey of Senlis.”
    Gwyneth glanced in the direction Lady Rosalyn indicated with a tiny toss of her head. Feeling a strong jolt to the nerves, she saw the two knights move forward, the handsome one accompanied by Odin’s warrior. She dropped her eyes. Her heartbeat thumped. Her stomach lurched.
    “They’ve seen us now, my dear,” Rosalyn purred, “and they’re coming our way.”
    Which of the two men was Senlis, Gwyneth wondered wildly, and which one Beresford? She did not have long to consider the question, for presently the two men stepped into the circle of her downcast vision, and she saw them from the chest downward. The one on the left was standing at his ease, his tunic a fashionable mulberry kerseymere, his chausses and cross-garters neat, his shoes fine and clean. The other stood stock-still before her, as rooted and strong as the Norse world tree, Yggdrasil. The cerulean of his tunic was beaten with dust and dirt and age to a disreputable bruise blue. His chausses and shoes were in such a battered condition that they did not further disgrace his tunic by negative comparison.
    The man on the left spoke, and Gwyneth heard his words with a wave of horrified fatalism. “Simon of Beresford,” he said, “I have the honor of presenting you to Gwyneth of Northumbria.”
    Gwyneth felt her throat close completely. She fought for breath.

    ****
    Upon leaving the council room, Senlis had bent his courtly graces to filing the rougher edges off his friend’s demeanor before they arrived at the great hall. The going was not easy, and Senlis was already imagining diplomatic measures to take should the unlucky wife-to-be run screaming from the room at her first encounter with Simon of Beresford in ferociously bad humor.
    Beresford only half listened to his friend’s cajoling. It was not so much the marriage itself that vexed him but the reason why he had been chosen as the bridegroom. Anger filled his chest to such a degree that at one point he exploded into Senlis’s skillful discourse with a bitter,
“Sons!“
His voice was harsh as he strode angrily beside Senlis. “I’m to produce
sons!”
    Senlis’s brows quirked expressively. “Is it such a difficult assignment, then, Simon?” he inquired with mock innocence, matching his friend stride for stride. When Beresford’s scowl deepened, he added, “A man always needs sons.”
    Beresford cast a fierce eye at Senlis. He growled, “I’m satisfied with the sons I already have and with the set of my life such as it is!”
    “You’ll not have to give up Ermina, if that’s what you mean.”
    Beresford had difficulty at the moment recalling the pretty, buxom serving wench, who was, in any case, irrelevant to the conversation. “I mean,” he said savagely, “that it’s one thing for a king to command a man to raise his sword in honor on the battlefield, and another for him to summon a man to—” Here he described in extremely rude terms exactly what he would raise to produce the commanded sons. He continued inventively in this vein at some length.
    With a half laugh at the vivid descriptions, Senlis at last interrupted with the observation that, “We’re almost at the hall, Simon. I have no power to cool your temper, but I’ll ask you kindly to control your tongue. Adela will not thank me if you cause a riot with your uncourtly language.”
    Beresford uttered an inarticulate sound of disgust deep in his throat.
    “That’s better!” Senlis encouraged. “And here we are. Now, smile, Simon! No? Then glower less gloomily, if you please, so that your wife-to-be won’t search in vain for something to like.”
    The moment they stepped into the great hall, Beresford felt insensibly better, in part because he had had a chance to vent his anger so thoroughly, but also because the polished planking beneath his feet and the high beams soaring above his head never failed to impress him with regal majesty and to remind him of his