Adam pointed to a small cottage half-hidden beneath trees and two other bigger houses.
“Go and bring yer mother here. Tell her the high steward’s men are here.”
“My sisters…” Adam hesitated.
Silene moved forward and put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “They will be safe with us.”
They watched the boy run off then Silene turned to the captain. “What do you intend to do?”
“Feed them.”
“Cap, we dinna have enough coin fer us and them,” Morgann pointed out, a worried look on his face.
Silene didn’t take her eyes off the captain. Would he—
“We will have enough,” he said with a flicker of resolve brightening his green eyes. She sighed when he left to get more food. Ten more Hail Marys.
She smiled and then turned back to the small, dirty faces before her. “Do you have a favorite story?”
They shook their heads.
Silene told them her favorite and while she was in the middle of telling, Bethany crawled into her lap to listen. Many times in the past, she had thought about having her own children, of being a mother. But that desire faded as her love for God grew, though it wasn’t gone completely.
Smoothing Bethany’s dirty curls away from her cheeks, the child stirred the desire in her again.
She didn’t notice the captain standing off to the side with two sacks in his hands, watching her in silence that was louder than Adam calling to them with a woman nervously in tow.
Silene set Bethany gently on the ground and stood up with a soft smile to greet the children’s mother.
“I am Sister Silene of St. Patrice’s Priory in Bamburgh.”
Adam’s mother narrowed her eyes on Silene’s hair and her clothes. “You do not look like a sister.”
Silene lifted her finger to her hair and looked at the captain—why him, she did not know.
He stepped forward with the bags and dropped them at Silene’s feet.
With a grateful grin, she bent to take a look inside. One bag was filled with grain and one with figs and other fruit.
“The captain has graciously supplied your family with food,” she told Adam’s mother. She let her gaze drift to him. All this must have come with a high price. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Aye. Thank you, Captain,” Adam’s mother agreed, her gaze transfixed to him. And why would it not be? What female with a pair of eyes in her head did not want to look at him? “I’m Katherine, wife of Simeon, the tailor,” she said, finally remembering to introduce herself.
The captain nodded. “Morgann will carry these bags back to yer home. Sister Silene will accompany ye and yer children. I will return with more food.”
The children’s mother nodded numbly and smiled. She turned to Silene. “God bless you and these men, Sister.”
“And you, as well.
But Silene didn’t go to the children’s home. She hurried to keep up with the captain when he strode off.
“How did you come by so much?” she asked him when she caught up. She ignored his scowl at seeing her. “Morgann said you barely had enough coin for the five of you.”
He looked around at everything but her until he finally took hold of himself and lifted his gaze from the ground.
“I can get…more from female vendors by doin’ the…ehm…simplest things.”
“What kind of simplest things do you mean?”