Egelric had just succeeded in distracting his boys with an idea for a game and maneuvering his very pregnant wife onto his lap when his cousin Aengus came into the hall.
“Aengus!” Lili cried. “How sweet!”
“Interruptions, interruptions,” Egelric muttered through his smile. He was always happy to see his cousin, but any day now his wife would be occupied with a new baby, and she would not even remember he had a lap for weeks to come.
For his part, Aengus scarcely seemed to notice there was anyone in the hall at all until Gils and Wulf had come crashing into him. He who had always been so friendly and talkative had grown moody and silent since his ordeal. But nobody was willing to hold it against him so far.
“How are you two mangy tykes?” he asked them, smiling at their exuberance. Aengus, who had had four daughters and no sons, had always been especially fond of Egelric’s boys, and between him, Maire, and Malcolm, the two already spoke better Gaelic than Egelric himself.
“You just missed supper, if that’s what you were planning,” Egelric said.
“A raid on your kitchen?” Aengus asked.
“It’s downstairs anyway!” Wulf scoffed. “Play with us!”
“Sit with me!” Lili laughed.
“Speak with you?” Aengus asked Egelric with a pained smile.
“Ach!” Egelric sighed. “Come with me?”
Wulf and Gils began to whine, and Lili added her voice to theirs, but Egelric and Aengus were both accustomed to ignoring such wails, and they spoke around them as if they were alone in the hall.
“A word in private, if you please,” Aengus nodded.
“Too private for young and pointed ears?”
“Aye.”
“That’s it!” Egelric clapped his big hands over the boys’ heads. “Everyone upstairs! I’m not hiding in the buttery again just to avoid your blessed ears.”
The boys whined still louder, but Egelric was accustomed to that, too. Attempting to have a private conversation in his study below while the boys were in the hall was no different from attempting to have a private conversation directly in the hall.
Their lamentations echoed in the stairwell as they and Lili went up and Egelric went down with Aengus, but once the doors were closed behind them, there was a silence such as he never heard in the daytime hours he spent in his study. Even Ethelwyn was out, though Egelric did not know where – only that it was not to visit Mouse.
“Private enough for you?” he asked as he sat on one of the benches.
“Aye.”
“Have a seat.”
“I should rather stand.” Aengus rubbed his hands together as if they were cold, though it was warm enough that evening that Egelric did not even feel the need to apologize for not having a fire in the study.
“Suit yourself,” Egelric shrugged. “When you’re my age…”
“I wasn’t alone in that pit,” Aengus said.
Egelric sat back and nodded his approval of this directness. “You don’t say. Or rather, you didn’t say.”
“It was… difficult to explain…”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know what to do. I need to tell you. I need help.”
Egelric nodded.
This story of waking up in a prison and being miraculously rescued by elves after two weeks had been a lot to swallow, but Egelric had had stranger experiences than that himself, and Maire had insisted that Aengus had returned home in such a state that he could not have been idling about in a safe and comfortable place all that time. Also, there was no doubt he was a changed man.
“I mean,” Aengus explained, “everything I said was true. I simply did not mention that I was not alone.”
“Go on.”
“The entire time. When I woke up, there was already someone there with me. There was a young… elf… woman…” he whispered.
“Ach! This begins to get interesting.”
“It’s not ‘interesting’!” Aengus yelped.
“I don’t mean interesting,” Egelric said. “I mean that there is a grand difference between being held captive for two weeks before being released by elves, and being held captive for two weeks with a young lady-elf before being released by elves.”
“I know it.”
“Was she captor or captive?”
“Captive. I’m certain of it. Cousin…” Aengus’s tone became pleading. “You remember Sela.”
“Aye.”
“She reminded me very much of Sela. She even – even talked the same way,” he said, smiling fondly at something far away. “‘It is sleep for me, sleep for you in this fire-hand-leaf-blanket-bed…’”
“Ach so!”
“I mean – ” Aengus gasped and flushed.
Egelric sat up and squinted at him. “As long as we’re having a ‘private’ conversation, cousin, why don’t you tell me whether anything happened that might be expected to happen if a man’s locked up for two weeks with a young woman and believes he’ll never get out again?”
“Cousin…” Aengus whimpered.
“Don’t be shy, lad. I shan’t tell anyone. I said it was to be expected. An honest man wouldn’t hold it against you. Nor even an honest woman, I should think, but what do I know? We’ll worry about that later. Now, about this girl…”
“I thought we would die in there!” Aengus turned away and turned back again. “Time wasn’t the same in there. There was only now. There was only she and I.”
“I know it, Aengus. I know how that can be. I don’t blame you. Now, tell me: Don’t you find it odd? Which is to say, not coincidental?”
“I don’t know…”
“Don’t you suppose it was planned that way? And whoever threw you in there thought it was to be expected as well?”
“I don’t know…”
“Don’t you suppose that was the point?”
“I don’t know! I don’t care about the point! I don’t care why we were in there. I only want to know what has happened to her now.”
“Well, what did happen to her?”
“I don’t know,” Aengus said, pacing in a tight circle. “When the elves came and got us out, as soon as she was above ground, she sat down and wouldn’t stand again, and she wouldn’t speak or even raise her head. I believe she must have been an elf like Sela.”
“Aye, I see what you mean,” Egelric muttered over his memories.
“They wouldn’t let me say farewell to her! They wouldn’t tell me what they meant to do to her! The elf who accompanied me only said that the other would take her home, and that she wasn’t in danger. But what is that to me? What will become of her?”
“And what will become of her child?” Egelric mused.
Aengus immediately halted his pacing.
“Assuming there is one, of course. Only you and she know what went on in there…”
Aengus did not answer, but he held a hand over his mouth to hide his grimace. He did not lift his other hand, however, to hide his teary eyes.
“Devils,” Egelric growled.
He was sorry he had mentioned it now. He had never learned what fate the elves had originally planned for Sela, but he knew that Vash had seemed to think it a great favor to offer to bring him the baby at all.
His heart had nearly broken over that unknown, unnamed, unborn baby, but he knew now that it would become his cuddly, mischief-making little Wulf-pup. If bringing Sela home to him had been a “favor”, then it was surely the greatest favor anyone had ever done him. Now it was his turn.
“We shall find her, Aengus. Don’t be fashing yourself. We shall find her, or find them both. I swear it.”
Chapters
Trust Egelric to get straight to the heart of the matter. He caught on right away that things seemd awfully coincidental and hwat had happened between the two of them.
I have no idea how he plans to keep his promise to his cousin but I'm sure that he will. Of course, then the story will have another twist Lena-Elf and Maire? Oh dear.