Corpus Tamrielicum - The Imperial Library

[30.9] KING EDWARD IX
disposition and a roving eye. He'd gotten her pregnant quickly, then turned his attentions
elsewhere. Shortly before the babe was due he'd been killed by the local goldsmith who'd
come home unexpectedly, found the handsome woodcutter in bed with his wife, and stuck a
knife in his back.
Tom's death had occurred on Heart's Day. The babe, a boy, was born four months later during
Mid Year. Two neighbor women came to help her birth him and one stayed a few days. After
that she was left to cope with caring for child and smallholding as best she could.
One evening in the next Morningstar, Josea went out to the small barn to do the evening
chores, leaving the babe asleep in his crib. The wind was howling. She had to clutch her cloak
tightly around her. She milked and fed the cow, fed the pigs and chickens. When she left the
barn she walked out into a fierce blizzard. The wind had risen so that the barn door was
wrenched from her hand and slammed back against the side of the barn. She couldn't even see
the house, which was near the road, and some little distance from the barn, but she set off
toward it with confidence.
She'd lived here all her life and knew every inch of ground, although she'd never seen a storm
quite this fierce and sudden. Already there were two inches of snow beneath her feet. She
struggled against the wind for some time, until at last she realized that she must somehow
have gone past the house. She turned back and tried to follow her own footprints, reasoning
that at least she'd warm herself in the barn before setting out again. But the snow was falling
so thickly that her footprints vanished before her eyes, and she was quite lost, and cold.
Josea struggled on, hoping to come across something recognizable, a boulder or a tree or the
road if not house or barn. Her hands and feet were wet and numb. She hadn't dressed heavily
and was now chilled to the bone, with ice forming on her eyebrows and lashes.
"Timmy! Tiimmmeee!" She cried her child's name, hoping against hope that the babe would
wake and cry and that she might follow the sound to him. She stood and listened, gasping the
cold air into her lungs, but there was only the howling of the wind. The wind, or something
more? A grey shape took form in front of her, staring at her with slitted yellow eyes. A great
grey wolf.
Her heart seemed to stop. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of her child lying helpless
in the house alone, and his mother dead outside. How unlucky, to die so close to shelter!
Unlucky. But she had always been unlucky, the unluckiest woman she knew. It might be days
before any thought to visit her. She sank down to her knees, exhausted. The wolf sat before
her, threw back its head and voiced its dreadful howl.
Her frozen hands scrabbled in the snow, looking for stone or stick, anything with which to
defend herself against the pack. Another dark shadow appeared from the whirling white snow.
She scrambled backwards in a panic. This one was also gray, but tall and two-legged, gray
cloaked and hooded. Its gloved hand reached for the wolf's head and patted it. Her scream
died in her throat.
"No need to fear, lass. We'll not bring you harm, nay quite otherwise. Be you the mother of
yon child?"
147