Lili hears a new language

“I’m not hungry,” Malcolm muttered.

“Come and eat, boy,” Egelric said with a gentle firmness. “Lili went to the trouble of warming up a supper for you.”

“Don’t eat for my sake,” Lili said to him. “Eat for your own sake. You need to be strong. Both of you.”

“I simply want to go home,” Malcolm said.

“You shall go home afterwards. Come eat,” Egelric insisted. “Warty is there, if your wife comes home. But you shall eat tonight seated across from the Lovely Lili, and not the Warty Mother.”

Malcolm snorted, but he came to sit before his plate. “I wish you would stop calling her simply Warty, the poor old hen,” he grumbled. “You make me feel like I’ve taken Alred’s place as the man with the ugly cook.”

“No one ever cared how ugly Alred’s cook was, Malcolm,” Egelric chuckled wearily. “We could have forgiven her that if her bread was as good as Warty’s.”

“Baby wants to learn how to cook,” Malcolm said softly, and he shoved a hunk of bread into his mouth to hide its trembling.

Lili was grateful that he had decided to eat, but her heart ached to see what had brought him to it.

When she had learned that Iylaine had disappeared again, Lili had expected things to be as they had been the last time. She had not forgotten what the anguish of the two men had been then. Now, though, the marriage seemed to have made it so much harder for the both of them, and perhaps all the more so because it had not been consummated. Malcolm would be telling himself that she was not yet quite his wife, and Lili could imagine how that would be worse than if she were not at all, or if she were indeed.

“Your cook isn’t so bad, either, henny,” Egelric said to her after he had had a bite of his own supper.

“Nor so ugly,” she said.

“You’ve noticed? Or you’ve noticed I’ve noticed?” he asked with a wink for her.

She smiled her gratitude at him. She knew his heart was broken, but he would not let hers be dragged down with it. He truly was a generous man, she thought.

She tried to think of something to say that would be a kindness to the both of them, but before she found it, they all turned at the sound of running feet and of two voices that called almost as one: “Egelric!”

One of them was only Ethelwyn, but the other was a tall man in strange clothing who was followed by another even taller.

Ethelwyn wailed, “I couldn’t stop them!”

Egelric leapt from his chair with a hopeful, whinnying cry. “Ears! You found her!”

Malcolm came to the opposite conclusion and roared, “What have you done with my wife?”

Lili, who had realized by this time that the men were elves, rose as well, trembling from surprise and fright. She had not realized that elves were quite so tall, quite so strange, quite so beautiful… And even though Iylaine was plainly Iylaine, before now she had not truly believed that elves were real at all.

The first elf had been about to say something to Egelric, but Malcolm’s words struck him like a blast of cold. He stopped and breathed, “Your wife?”

“My wife! Iylaine! My Baby! What have you devils done with her?”

The elf shook his head slowly, like a man hearing spoken a foreign language of which he knows but a few words. And yet she knew that Egelric had spoken at length with him in English, and he enjoyed Alred’s poetry. Certainly, she thought, he had understood the word “wife.”

“Where is she, Ears?” Egelric asked softly, but Ears and Malcolm both ignored him.

“My wife!” Malcolm repeated, as if he enjoyed the effect the word had on the elf.

Ears recoiled as if the word had been a lash, and then he shouted, “She’s my wife! My wife! And more than that! Your word ‘wife’ means nothing! Your – ”

Malcolm sprang at him, snarling like the cat his eyes made him seem at times, and they struggled briefly together.

Lili could only watch them, quaking with terror. She was trapped between the two long tables. Sophie had told her of what elves had done to the men they had killed here years before. Lili’s maid had also told her stories of the legendary savagery of the Scots, and she knew that Malcolm always carried two wicked knives, even when he did not wear his sword.

But Egelric and Ethelwyn and the other elf soon separated them, and they only stood glaring at one another, panting and trembling as men did when they fought out of hatred.

“Where is she, Ears?” Egelric asked again.

“I… don’t know…” the elf murmured as he struggled to return to his senses. “What does this mean, Egelric?” he whimpered like a child seeking reassurance.

“My daughter married this man the very day she disappeared,” Egelric said, and Lili thought there was a trace of triumph in his voice.

“Vash…” the other elf cautioned softly.

“She’s too young!” Ears cried.

“She’s old enough!” Malcolm shouted at him.

“Malcolm, hush,” Egelric said. “She’s old enough, and I gave them my blessing. She disappeared on her wedding night, and I was hoping you could tell me something about that. But I have had a rope hanging from every blasted tower for four nights, and I have not seen you.”

Ears did not seem to be paying him much attention, too busy glaring at Malcolm.

“He has only been released from captivity this night,” the tall elf said in a slow, deep voice. He had a stronger accent than the other, and Lili found it intriguing. She suddenly wondered what language the elves spoke.

“She is my wife,” Malcolm hissed.

“She is my wife!” the elf cried. “What have you done to her?”

“I?” Malcolm shouted back. “What have you done? Calling her your wife! If you have touched a hair on her head, it’s here I shall slay you!”

“Malcolm!” Lili wailed when she saw a flash as he drew his knife.

“I haven’t touched her!” the elf said. “She’s only a child! How dare you lay your hands on her?”

“Where is she?” Egelric cried. “For the love of heaven! We shall worry about whose wife she is when she comes home!”

“It’s my own wife she is!” Malcolm protested.

“She is my wife!” the elf shouted and held his hand out towards Egelric, the palm upward. “You know what that means! Did you never see the scar upon her palm when she was a child?”

Egelric lifted his head and grew suddenly pale. Lili did not understand, but it seemed Egelric did. She did know that Egelric himself had a long, pale scar all down the palm of his right hand which he often rubbed with the thumb of his left when he was anxious.

“What does what mean?” Malcolm snarled, looking uneasily between the two of them. Now it was Egelric and Ears who ignored him completely.

“Gentlemen,” the other elf said gravely, “as Egelric suggested, we should concentrate on finding Iylaine now.”

“Yes!” Ears shouted. “Egelric, I need something from her body,” he said quickly, “a hair, a fingernail, anything…”

“Why?” Egelric frowned.

“So I can find her.”

“But she scarcely lived here…”

“We might find a hair on the floor of her room,” Lili said timidly.

“Malcolm, don’t you have a lock of her hair?” Egelric asked.

“That will do well,” Ears said imperiously. “Give it to me.”

Malcolm stiffened.

“Malcolm, please,” Egelric said.

“You trust him?” Malcolm growled. “What dark magic will you devils do with it?”

“I shall find her with it,” Ears said.

“And then?”

“And then bring her home! Egelric!”

“Her home is with me,” Malcolm said.

“Egelric, make him give it to me!” Ears cried impatiently. “We’re wasting time, and her life is in danger. I only need a strand of it anyway. And you may have it back when I have found her,” he added with a slight smile for Malcolm.

“Vash,” the tall elf said in soft warning.

“Ladím alírú,” Ears replied.

Lili quivered at the sound of his words. They reminded her of the Moorish language, of which Leofric had taught her a few words and phrases. It was true she had never considered her husband’s elven friends as a possibility for learning a new language. But she could not begin to guess what they were saying.

“Malcolm,” Egelric said firmly.

Malcolm began fumbling in the pouch at his belt. “She’s my wife,” he said, and Lili heard that his lips trembled again. “She loves me and wants me and will tell you so. Only ask her whether she likes turtles.”

“And you may ask her whether she likes toads,” Ears said coldly.

“Here!” Malcolm said and thrust the little braid into the elf’s hand.

“I only need a strand.”

“You may keep it all,” Malcolm said. “What need of it have I, when it’s on my pillow her head shall lie?”