Alred reveals how dead he is

“Not a word before I’ve combed my hair, Matilda. Jupiter, I look a fright! I’m going to look like a serf for the next year with this hair.”

Matilda sat on the bed and watched Alred with shining eyes. It was the old Alred, certainly, with his jokes and his easy laugh, but just as certainly he had changed. Once he had washed the dirt from his face, she had been shocked by how pale it seemed, and worse still were the dark shadows around his eyes that did not wash away.

“Say, Jupiter’s dead,” he murmured. “They killed him right under me.”

“So we heard. I’m sorry about your horse, Alred.”

“Oh, never mind the horse. We lost fifty men, did we not?” He shook his head grimly. “Never trust a traitor, Matilda.”

“Morcar?”

“Morcar?” He looked up in confusion. “What did Morcar do? I was talking about Hereward the Dane.”

“Very well, your hair is combed, so tell me about this Dane.”

“Ah, Matilda, I shall tell you all about it another time. For now I shall simply tell you, he’s lord of this and that over there in these godforsaken fenlands, and one of the things this fool did was to sack Peterborough Abbey last year – his own abbey! – with some of King Swein’s men. To protect it from the Normans, says he.”

“He sacked an abbey?”

“That’s what I said when Morcar told me about this. Oh, Matilda!” he groaned and pushed back his hair, mussing it again. “It was too perfect! We were high and dry in our fort surrounded by marshes. There was no way William’s army could attack us, and we sent out men every night to pick off a few of them. We were almost as bad as the damned mosquitoes. Then they finally got the hilarious idea to build a bridge right across the marsh. And they did it too! And we just sat up on high and laughed as they started to march across it, and under their weight the whole thing sunk down into the muck, taking not a few horses along with it.”

“How I wish I could have seen that!” Matilda laughed.

“Ah, Matilda, we could have stayed there for years. And more and more of the countryside was rebelling around us. It was working! If the Scots had sent men…” He sighed. “But about this Dane. Remember what he did to that abbey? Well, the abbot did too. And he told William’s army of a path through the marsh. It was all over in a day.”

He shook his head sadly. 

“How did you escape? Oh, Alred, aren’t you going to take off that dreadful thing?” she added, waving her hand at his humble tunic.

“I don’t even remember escaping,” he said. “Sigefrith saved me. I was… well, I was in a fever.”

“You’ve been sick, haven’t you?” she asked softly.

“Quite,” he said simply. “Now, aren’t you going to take off that dreadful thing?”

“Oh, Alred!”

He winked at her. “Your humble servant will be happy to assist.”

“What about you and those rags on you?”

“You first. I want to get a look at you before you get a look at me and ask me where the half of me went.”

“Did you lose something out there?” she purred as she turned her back to him.

“Leave the jokes to me, Matilda. You’ll see about that later. All I lost was a stone or two, and about five quart of blood to the mosquitoes.”

“So you’ve been sick,” she tried again.

“Never mind that now. There, you’re done.”

“What about Edwin?” she asked as she pulled her arm out of her sleeve. “Was he killed?”

“Which one? Edwin the blacksmith or Edwin the Earl?”

“The Earl, of course, though we shall miss the blacksmith.”

“Matilda – Edwin never made it to Ely. I told you, the Scots wouldn’t send aid, and on the way home his own men killed him.”

“Oh, not him too! Who remains of the men we knew, Alred?”

“A few, Matilda, but they’re all gone over to William. Edward, Edgar, Harold, William – Swein of Denmark for all they care! It’s all the same to them, so long as their rents are paid.” He jerked off his tunic in disgust.

“Oh, Alred,” Matilda breathed. His body was more frightening than his face – he was all ribs and elbows and jutting shoulder blades.

He turned his face away from her searching eyes for a moment, but quickly recovered his good humor. “Ah, Matilda, this is your chance to weasel Maud’s cook away from her at last – she’ll fatten me up in no time!”

Matilda tried to laugh, and failed.

“Don’t cry, Matilda,” he whispered, moving too close to allow her to see beyond his face. “I didn’t trek all the way across England with no one but that insufferable Sigefrith for company only to fall over dead at the end. Now, why don’t you cheer yourself up by telling me what happened to Egelric. Did he lose his baby?”

“How did you know about Egelric?”

“I met him on the road. Like a fool I asked him about his baby. He told me you would tell me what happened.”

“Oh, Alred, it’s worse than what you think. He had a son at the end of summer – honestly, the most beautiful baby I had ever seen, Alred – but a few weeks later, a couple of elves came and took him. Egelric thinks they were Iylaine’s parents.”

Alred frowned. “So why didn’t they take Iylaine?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me, if he had any idea. But it would have been just as hard on him if they had taken her instead, don’t you think?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “What did they do with it? Did they kill it?”

“I don’t know, Alred. They searched for weeks but never found a trace.”

He shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to have taken it well. He looks years older.”

“Oh, but Alred, that’s only the half of it. His wife killed herself in the fall, after he stopped searching for the baby.”

“His wife?” he repeated, stunned.

“And it was he who found her. I wasn’t sorry to see her go – think of the trouble she caused everyone with her malicious gossip, and never took care of her own child but always sent her to Gunnilda Hogge while she lazed around at home, and the way she treated him, why – ”

He stopped her lips with his thumb. “All that may be, Matilda,” he corrected softly, “but it’s possible he loved her. It could happen – after all, you were just crying over your most unworthy servant here, and I’m only half dead.”

“Oh, Alred,” she sobbed, “Don’t say such things!”

“Tsk! You know I can’t talk about myself without making a joke. Now, come here and let me show you how entirely not dead I am,” he laughed, pulling her close.