Gunnilda gives her blessing

“Oh, Bertie!” Gunnilda breathed when her eldest son stepped back into the room.

She had planned to ration her tears over the next few days so that she would not look like a blubbering fool, but she had to allow herself a few now. Even Bertie appeared moved.

“I’ve never been so proud of anything in my entire life!” she said.

But with Bertie, no serious emotion could long endure.

“How come, Ma? Because I got it on right-​​side-​​out on the first try?”

“Oh, Bertie!” she laughed. “I guess you finally learned!”

“Don’t be so sure. Expect to see it inside-​​out on Friday.”

“Don’t you dare! And humiliate your mother! You had better take it off and put it on again and take it off again to get it set up right for Friday.”

At the sound of young feet bounding up the stairs two-​​by-​​two, she called out, “Beddy? Is that you? Come on in here and look at your brother!”

Bedwig stopped outside the door. “He’s not naked, is he?”

“Bedwig!” she gasped. “Why would I – ”

“No more naked than you usually are!” Bertie yelled.

“That’s no reassurance!” Beddy said, but he came into the bedroom – fully clothed, as it happened. He whistled in admiration. “Don’t you look fine!”

“I’m not supposed to look fine!” Bertie protested. “I’m supposed to look humble and plain.”

“Luckily you have your face for that.”

“What do you think your father would say, Beddy?” Gunnilda asked him.

“I don’t know, but I guess he would be that proud.”

Bedwig had been but eight years old when his father had died, and Gunnilda feared that he would not remember him as he ought. He loved Ethelmund dearly – as he should, of course, but Gunnilda was constantly suppressing twinges of jealousy for Alwy’s sake.

Bedwig’s and Gytha’s love for Ethelmund – though perfectly right and proper, she always reminded herself – seemed just a little bit traitorous to her. She felt the same whenever she caught herself being affectionate with Ethelmund in ways that she had never been with her first husband, who surely had been more deserving of it.

Alwy would have been “that proud” of Bertie – that was certain. Alwy had been absurdly proud of all his children, but Gunnilda knew that Bertie was the finest of the four. Though Bedwig had Alwy’s blue eyes and blond hair, he otherwise resembled the men of her family; and while Gytha had some of Alwy’s traits in her dark face, she was only a girl. Bertie was the man Alwy should have been. Bertie was therefore the finest man she had ever known.

She could scarcely wait for Bedwig to go out again so she could fuss over him properly.

“You’re a big man, Sir Bertie,” she murmured into his shoulder as she dried her tears against his initiate’s tunic. She had sewn his tunic and surcoat with her own hands, and they had already dried many tears.

“Don’t call me sir yet, Ma. It’s probably bad luck, or something. And I’m not so big as my father, either.”

“Almost!”

“Not even! And why would I want to be? I would have a hard time kissing little tiny you if I were.” He kissed her to demonstrate, but he did have to stoop to do it.

“Your father never had any problem kissing me from his height. You always used to hate it when he did, too!” she cried, cackling through her tears.

She could have said that she had hated it too, at times, but now she only knew that she would have given up a great many things if only she could see Alwy come home from the fields again – and wouldn’t she kiss him then! She would kiss him as she always should have done.

Bertie dried her tears with the heel of his big hand and said, “I only hated it because I didn’t want anybody kissing you besides me. And I still don’t.”

“And what about me?” Gunnilda took Edris from her cradle so that she would have something to do with her face and hands – so she would not look like such a blubbering fool.

“What about you, Ma? You kiss everybody in this house, right and left.”

“I know that, but what if I don’t want anybody kissing you?”

“Uh oh!” Bertie blushed. “Here it comes!”

“Here what comes? You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

“You’re going to tell me to stop kissing girls right and left!”

“You had better, if you haven’t already!” Gunnilda gasped. “That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.”

“What then?” he asked. He began tickling the baby, and Gunnilda supposed it was so he would not look like such a blushing fool.

“I mean one of these days, you’re going to find a girl you like so much you would rather kiss her than me.”

“Never!”

“Never?”

“Now, Ma,” he sighed. “I grant you I’ll find a girl I like so much I want to marry her, and live with her, and have babies with her, and so forth. But I shall never, never, never find a girl I love more than you. Is that acceptable?”

“It might not be to her.”

“I won’t marry a girl who doesn’t love you. Or whom you don’t love.”

Gunnilda thought he might only be saying it because he knew she and Anna got along very well. But it was a bold statement, and she knew Bertie’s word was good.

“If my girl doesn’t like my mother, there must be something wrong with her, because there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Oh, pish!”

“Now give me this baby before you drop her, and go wipe your nose.”

Gunnilda followed his orders, and gladly, as she followed the orders of no other man.

When she returned, she straightened her hair and dress and back and said, “Now, let’s talk serious, Bertie. Your mother is an awful sneak, and I hope you won’t ever tell anyone what I did, but you listen to me. Last market day I went to the King’s market so I could go past Anna’s house. And I had a look in their pig sty when I went by, and there wasn’t nothing in that trough that shouldn’t have been there, and that’s a real good sign that you’re dealing with a girl who knows how to run a kitchen.”

“Ma!” Bertie cried in mock horror and laughed.

Gunnilda laughed wickedly with him, and even little Edris caught the mood and began to giggle.

“And what else! When I come back, I stopped by and knocked. And of course I knew Anna and her father was at the market, because I was just there. So there was only her little brother at the house. And I said I wanted to look at some tiles, and he showed me around, real polite, and I must say that’s a real neat little house. So I said to myself, I said, ‘Here’s a girl who knows how to keep a house full of males tidy and who knows how to teach a little boy manners.’ And that’s what you’re going to need if you’re going to have a house of your own, my boy, and have Osric’s naughty little Aylmer as a page.”

“You may be right there…” Bertie murmured, as if he had never thought of it before.

“Oh, you big baby! What I’m trying to say is, I like Anna real well as a girl, and as a housekeeper, and maybe even as a little bit of a mother, too, if that brother of hers is an indication. She’s young, but she’s a big girl for all that. So, I’m just warning you, Bertie, don’t let her get away. I won’t like the next one half so well, and then what will you do?”

“Make you come live with me?” he grinned, but he hid behind the baby’s belly so she could not see what a blushing fool he was.

“Don’t tempt me, Sir Bertie! Don’t tempt me!”