Flann does not hear

“Flann!” His gaze roamed quickly over her face, her shoulders, and all of her. He seemed startled, and even a little confused.

Flann did not find this charming in the least. “Most men agree I’m not as fair as my sister,” she said coldly.

“Not at all!” he gasped. “I would not say so – at all!”

At last his poise caught up with him. He took her hand gently between his fingers, and lifted it only far enough to pull it away from her side: he bowed his body the rest of the way to kiss it.

“I am enchanted to meet you, Flann. My name is Sebastien, but all my friends call me Bastien, and I hope you will.”

“Certainly.”

“Is this your daughter?” he smiled as Osh stepped out of the shadows. “I love the little babies!”

Flann walked past him to stare out the window at the rain. “Liadan is the name of her,” she muttered.

“As in the story?” he asked.

Flann turned to him in surprise. “You know it?”

“But, she has gray eyes! Just like – like in the story…”

“You know it?” Flann repeated.

“I am a student of many things!” he said grandly. “And I had an Irishman for a teacher for some years.” He looked back at the baby and cooed, “Bonjour, ma puce! Enchanté!”

She heard him kissing her baby’s hand, but aside from that low bow at the waist, it was quite unlike the kiss he had given her. She could hear him kiss, kiss, kiss all the way up the baby’s arm and perhaps as far as her cheek.

“What did you say to her?” Flann asked.

He turned back to her, and Osh took advantage of his inattention to scuttle into the shadows with the baby.

“I say, ‘Good day, my flea! I am enchanted to meet her!’”

“Flea?” Flann gasped.

“Isn’t it? This small black bestiole, which goes on cats and dogs and sometimes me?”

“It’s a blood-​​sucking insect you’re calling her?”

He laughed. “It is a quite nice thing to say in French to someone who is so small and neat. You say ‘my pulse’, don’t you, in Gaelic? It is quite as silly.”

“You’re speaking Gaelic?” Flann asked.

“Aye,” he replied in that language. “As I told you already, it’s an Irishman had the teaching of me. If you find my accent funny, the fault is on him and not on me.”

Flann was stunned. He was apparently as vain as Cat and Paul had reported, but there was a vivacity to his vanity that made it appealing to a girl such as she. He gave the impression of a man who was in fact as clever as he believed himself to be.

However, she reminded herself that if his wit seemed to sparkle, it was only because he kept it well-​​sharpened. One must always fear losing him as a friend, for he surely made an uncomfortable enemy.

“My sister tells me you have a letter for me?” she prompted, grateful to be able to speak Gaelic, for Osh was near.

“Aye,” he said, smiling less. “If I am honest, I should say I would not have come all this way if I hadn’t. I did not so greatly desire to meet your Abbot once I had read his new book. But I had promised Brude to give this letter to you.”

Flann could feel the tears welling up already. She wanted to be alone – alone with her letter, even if she could not read it, only to see something he had made, only to hold something his hands had once held. His hands… his freckled hands with the curling red hairs across the backs of them…

There was one tear already. She pretended to scratch her eyebrow so she could wipe it away.

“Shall I read it to you?” he asked softly.

“No!” she choked.

“Flann… I know.”

She blinked at him.

“I know everything.” He looked over at Osh’s silhouette in the entry, with the round bump on the shoulder that was her baby’s head – Brude’s baby’s head.

“He told you?” she whispered.

“I know everything. I know what is in this letter, too.” He patted his chest, where the letter must have lain. “I was there when he wrote it. You see, it is no matter if I read it to you. If you will ask this gentleman to leave us alone.” He glanced at Osh again.

“Ach! It’s no matter if he stays or goes. He isn’t speaking a word of the Gaelic, and the ears of him are hearing a whisper from the room above.”

He frowned and looked at Osh again. “Then it is no matter,” he sighed at last. “May we sit where the light is better?”

They sat, but he made no move to retrieve the letter. He stared at her, and she stared out at the rain.

She had been listening to that dreary, unceasing drizzle all the day: the water that fell on September’s stubble fields, promising nothing, yielding nothing.

Now she could also hear Osh pacing in the entry, murmuring incomprehensible endearments to her restless baby.

“You came in the rain,” she murmured in wonder. “Yesterday was fair as the May.”

He continued to stare.

Now that he sat beside the sky, she saw something Cat had never noticed or had failed to mention. “It’s… gray as the clouds the eyes of you are…”

Still he stared.

“Say something,” she whispered.

“The eyes of your daughter no less.”

“They’re not the eyes of me.” Her own were dark and full of tears.

“I knew whose they were when first I saw them,” he replied.

Then she was certain he knew everything, and she bowed her head.

He patted his chest again, then slipped his hand into his robe and pulled out a small bit of dark parchment.

“My treasure,” he began even as he was unfolding it.

Flann’s annoyance flared up at the idea that he had read it already, and well enough to have memorized the first words.

He read, “I hope that word of my death has reached you before this letter.”

She gasped at the sudden pain, and Sebastien paused. Even Osh had gone quiet in the entry.

She had not realized how it would feel to hear him speak again, to hear her love say “I”, even if it was not his voice and not his body. There would only be a few more phrases, and that would be all she would ever hear from him again.

“Stop!” she choked.

He let his hands fall into his lap. “You did know?” he asked fearfully.

“Aye! I knew, I knew. But I can’t…”

She looked him over again, this unfamiliar face with its haunting eyes. He was an utter stranger to her, and she did not like his intimate knowledge of her most precious secrets. And yet it meant Brude had trusted him.

“I don’t want to hear,” she whimpered. “As long as I don’t hear… there will always be more.”

He cast an annoyed glance past her to where Osh must have stood, and then he leaned closer to her and said softly, “There always will be more, Flann. May I read you one or two more of these lines? He wanted to tell you this.”

“Not all of them,” she said.

“One more. Listen: I shall not tell you my last thoughts were for you and our child. You know it is true, but truer still it is that there will be no last thoughts for us, my treasure. Even as you hear these words I am thinking of you.”

“Stop!” she sobbed. “Stop! Stop!”

“I am sorry.”

She heard Osh come to stand in the room with them again, more from Liadan’s snuffling than from any sound of the elf’s feet.

“No more,” Flann gasped. The tears were coming fast now, and she wiped her face on her sleeve and immediately had to wipe it again with the other.

“I think it is time for you to leave, sir,” Osh said with the same quiet firmness he had used to pry Liadan from her arms.

Sebastien stared up at him, but there was nothing to say to that remark, and he said nothing.

“It is time for naptime, and these pretty ladies cry sometimes when they are too tired, you see.”

Sebastien seemed to be waiting for her to say something, but Flann was only too relieved to let Osh handle the situation. She could not reassemble the fragments of herself in time to politely wish the young gentleman goodbye.

Sebastien stood.

“I am sorry to have disturbed all of you,” he said in English. She had found his voice gentler when he was speaking Gaelic. “Flann, I hope to see you again when you are feeling not too tired. Et toi aussi, ma puce,” he added sweetly for the baby’s sake.

“I am sorry I do not go with you to the door,” Osh said. “But it is cold and wet for the little babies by the door.”

“It is no matter,” Sebastien said curtly. “Good day to you all, good day, good day.”

Flann hid behind her hands and surrendered her attention to the sound of rain until he had gone out into it. Only then did she realize that he had taken the letter with him, and she sobbed again.

Osh clucked softly. “Listen, now, Liadan. Finally you are quiet and now Mama is crying. What shall we do? We only have one Osh, and I cannot hold you both. Or? Shall we try?”

“Ach, Osh!” Flann groaned and stood up. It was difficult to cry before Osh.

Osh handed the baby to her. “Now this is an idea. You hold the baby, and I hold you.”

“Osh!”

“Never mind. I have another idea. You go up to Cat’s room, and you both lie down in the big bed, and you shall have a sleeping race. And whoever wakes up the prettiest and happiest, wins.”

“And you will be the judge?” Flann giggled in spite of the tightness in her throat.

“What do you suppose? And only one of you will wake up with a wet diaper, so if you do not win, my darling, we shall have quite a lot of making-​​happy work to do.”