Catan gives an unsatisfactory reply

“Whoa whoa whoa! Jupiter!” Cynewulf squealed. “You worked a miracle, Lord Father! Just like in the Bible! Wait till I tell Haakon and Heaf! Jupiter!”

No one corrected Cynewulf for twice invoking a pagan deity within Saint Margaret’s chapel. Cynewulf was the only one among them saying anything coherent in that first moment.

The elf Paul squinted against the brightness of the glass doors. He was not accustomed to the light, but he could see as crisply and clearly as ever. It had taken nothing more than opening his eyes.

As they adjusted to the light, he began to make out the shadowy face of the priest. It was livid, gaunt, slick with sweat—almost cadaverous—but Paul dared not ask him whether he was ill. From descriptions he had heard of the Abbot, it was possible that he always looked that way.

Amid the tangle of half-​worded exclamations behind him, he heard the Duchess’s soft voice call out, “Won’t you turn and look at your bride, Friend?”

Sir Sigefrith said, “She won’t be this beautiful again for at least nine months.”

“You have to guess which one she is!” Cynewulf laughed. “Don’t pick the wrong one or she’ll be sore!”

Paul bit his lip and tried to share a last wistful glance with the Abbot, but the priest was staring at him as if he had never seen an elf before.

He turned.

Of course he could have picked out Catan from among a thousand thousand women. He could have found her in the dark by following her light.

But he could have found her by her face as well. He already knew all of her features, for she had allowed him to learn them with his fingers. He already knew her slender, pointed nose, her wedge-​shaped chin, her thick, velvety brows, her cloud of hair. Her full lips he knew best of all.

When he saw her, though, he realized that he had never known how to assemble all her features into a single face. Worse, his fingertips alone could not tell him of the subtleties that overlay it: not the blush of her cheeks, not the latent sorrow of her unsmiling mouth, and neither the shadows beneath her eyes nor the worried crinkles at their corners.

To the eyes of an elf she was exotically beautiful. To the eyes of her lover, she appeared frightened and sad. And he dared not mention it, for fear that she had always looked this way—or, worse, only since she had entered the chapel to be married to him.

When in fear, he knew, the only thing to do was to joke.

“I’m afraid I shall have to proceed by process of elimination,” he said. “Let me see… You must be the Duchess, for I recall that your hair is supposed to be fairer than mine.”

Hetty smiled and curtsied.

“And you look enough like Egelric to be Aengus.”

“Should I be offended?” Aengus laughed.

“And you must be Lord Dunstan, since you are the shortest man here.”

“What about me?” Cynewulf cried. “I’m shorter!”

“You can only be Wyn, because you’re so cuuuuute!”

“Oh my—” the real Ethelwyn choked and turned red. “Who told you about that?”

Cat had, and when Paul looked back at her, she was smiling.

“And you must be Cat, because you have such a guilty look on your face for telling the Mouse’s secrets.”

Her smile was a little guilty, a little sheepish, it was true. But her eyes were not. Her eyes were frightened and pleading.

Less than twelve hours had passed since he had been awoken from his sleep by her terror. He had scarcely seen her in that time, for the ladies had whisked her away to comfort her, and talk to her, and fuss over her as a bride. Indeed, she had been whisked from one place to another, one pair of hands to another, so many times and so rapidly that she must have been bewildered.

Perhaps she did not even know how she came to be here in the chapel with him. It was he who had insisted that she would not sleep apart from him again. It was Flann who had insisted that they be married that day. Perhaps she did not know how to escape.

“Whoa!” Cynewulf shouted. “You guessed right! Didn’t I tell you she was pretty?”

Paul had not felt so awkward before her in weeks. He had so often been frustrated by his inability to read her expressions that he had not realized how convenient the excuse of blindness could be. The ability to see her face did not tell him what was in her heart, and he feared that now he would nevertheless be expected to know it.

“Yes, but you didn’t tell me she was beautiful,” he whined. “You should have warned me not to presume. Cat, you’re too pretty to marry a goat-​faced elf like me. If you don’t want to, I mean.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Aengus said. “You don’t know what she’s hiding beneath that pretty little nose of hers.”

“What?” Cynewulf asked.

“This.” Aengus pointed at his own nose. “And worse, if I may say so, since my mother was not of the clan, whereas Cat’s blood is pure.”

“Ohhhh!” Cynewulf said knowingly. “My sister says she would never marry such a nose. But I suppose I would, since it’s pretty on girls.”

“You must think of your sons, Old Man.”

“You got a pretty wife, and so did Egelric and Malcolm.”

“Well, that’s true…”

“And Cat’s friend—no! Paul!—has a little nose, so perhaps their children will have medium-​size noses.”

“Old Man,” Hetty blushed. “One does not discuss such matters in church.”

“Why not?”

The priest had not made a sound since his “Amen”, but now his grave voice immediately stilled the merriment of his congregation.

“Because, my lord, we have not even married these two young people yet, and I think it too soon to begin preparations for their infants’ baptisms.”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” Cynewulf grumbled. “Only about what they’ll look like.”

“Shall we proceed?” the Abbot asked. “This… situation is somewhat irregular.”

“Father,” the Princess laughed, “miracles always are!”

“Shall we proceed?” he repeated coldly.

“Cat?” Paul murmured. “Mina?”

“Aye,” she replied absently, staring at the glass doors and out into the light.