Aengus smiled sheepishly. He had been hoping Lena would open the door.
“Good afternoon, Friend!”
“Aengus?” the elf asked, so quietly that Aengus realized the baby must have been sleeping.
“Aye, it’s my own self,” he murmured. “Is—”
The elf grabbed him by the arms. “Where’s Cat?”
“Well—”
“She’s far away! Is she safe? I was about to go after her.”
Aengus stepped inside and looked around. “She’s safe, Friend. She’s with her cousin Egelric.”
The elf did not seem to find this reassuring. “Egelric?”
“I’m here to tell you. Friend…”
Aengus could hear nothing, but he thought the hush of their speech would have been odd if they had been alone.
He turned to the elf and asked, “Is Lena here?”
“She always takes a nap with Pene—with Benedict after dinner.”
“Penedict?” Aengus smiled. “She still calls him that?”
“We don’t have this ‘B’ sound in our language. It’s difficult for her.”
“And for you?” Aengus chuckled.
“It is a bad habit,” the elf sniffed. “What about Cat?”
Aengus smiled sadly. He would have liked to have talked about Benedict a while—he would have loved to have seen him—but his conscience would not permit him to ask. He had come to tell the elf about Cat out of duty, but since Lena had not answered the door herself, he could not push duty any further.
“Well, Friend, I think you know about her sister…”
“About her…” The elf patted his stomach.
“Aye, her trouble. She said you told her it was certain.”
He shrugged.
“So Cat told Maire, and Maire told me, and I told Egelric.”
The elf winced.
“And Flann won’t tell any of us who the father may be. She has many admirers, but I suppose it’s a married man he is, else she would tell us.”
“But where’s Cat?”
“Cat,” Aengus said patiently, “is with her sister. Egelric took Flann home with him this morning, and Cat wanted to go with her.”
“Alone!” the elf whimpered. “She can’t defend her sister against Egelric alone!”
“It’s not from Egelric the girl needs defending, but from whatever man did this to her! Egelric’s angry, but he won’t hurt her.”
“He hurt Cat!”
“That… was because Cat had brought an elf into his house…”
“And what if the father is an elf and comes after her?”
Aengus hesitated. “Is it?”
“I don’t know what it is!” the elf whined. “I only know that I’m an elf, and I would go after her if she were my wife. Perhaps I shall! I don’t want Cat staying with that man.”
“And ‘that man’ doesn’t want Flann staying here with whatever man did this to her.”
“I shall go to her.”
“Cat told me to ask you to wait for her here.”
“For how long?”
“I believe she means to come speak to you soon. But Egelric was not about to wait this morning. You can imagine…”
“I can imagine,” the elf said grimly.
Silence. The elf’s mouth was set in a hard line, and his eyes seemed to be staring deeper into Aengus than sighted eyes ever could.
Although he knew himself at least ten years older than the elf, he felt again as he had that morning before the wrath of Egelric, and as he did every day before the sorrow of his wife: young and foolish, and without a moral leg to stand on.
In the end, the elf only asked mildly, “Would you like to see your baby? It sounds like he’s awake.”
“And Lena?” he asked hopefully.
The elf shrugged. “I believe she’s still sleeping, or pretending to be.”
Aengus was stricken. Was it possible she did not want to see him?
“Is she angry at me?” he whispered.
“Angry?”
“Because I never come to see her?”
The elf snorted. “She never expected to be more than a concubine anyway. I don’t think she realizes she could be anything else.”
Aengus’s face crumpled like a rag, but the elf, who could not see it, walked past him and climbed up the ladder into the loft.
Aengus had wiped his eyes on his sleeve and otherwise composed himself by the time the elf returned. His son was wide awake and blinking at him. Even he seemed to look through Aengus’s smiling face into places that were supposed to remain hidden.
“She’s sleeping,” the elf said. “I tried talking some baby talk to Benedict, and she never even snorted.”
“So you know she’s sleeping.” Aengus laughed and then bit his bottom lip.
“She always laughs at me,” the elf whined as he passed the baby into Aengus’s arms. “I tell her she shouldn’t, or I shall only dare speak seriously to the baby, and he will find me dreadfully boring.”
“How can anyone speak seriously to such a cute little face?” Aengus smiled. “The devil! Doesn’t he look like the old father of me!”
“Does no one ever speak seriously to your father?”
Aengus laughed and bit his lip again. “No one dares speak otherwise to my old father. You have a point, Friend.”
“Lena says he looks like you. She says she could have picked him out of a thousand thousand babies.”
Aengus sniffled to prevent his nose from dripping into his mustache. Fortunately the cold outside was sufficient excuse.
He promised himself he would remember that Lena liked to nap after dinner, but for today he would have to go away without seeing her. He had not seen either of them in over two weeks, and he was astounded at how much the baby had grown in that time—nearly half his life so far, in fact.
Nevertheless there were many things he knew about his son: he never saw Alred but Alred whispered some little Benedict-related anecdote to him, like secret alms slipped to a starving beggar.
“I’m certain she wouldn’t trade him for a thousand thousand babies,” Aengus murmured, certain, because he wouldn’t.
“Would anyone?” the elf gasped. “Could you imagine? The smell alone!”
Aengus laughed. “One must take care with what one says to you. You look at everything two ways.”
“I try to find the funny way to look at everything.”
“Then you and Cat will get along well.”
The elf grinned at him in gratitude. Aengus smiled back, a little regretfully. He had long felt sorry for Cat, who had suffered so much, and who had found herself inextricably bound to a husband who was not only an elf but also blind.
More and more Cat seemed the lucky one.
(And if he did, wouldn’t that wake her up?)
Chapters
I thought Lena might be the one having revelations, but I guess it's Aengus. That makes sense, when you present it this way. And wow, so Flann let them know. But you know, I think she should become a nun. It would look repetant, and she could live with the father. Maybe. Depends on who, exactly, the father really is.