Selwyn and Trudi come to an understanding

Selwyn squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his arms against his body, trying to make himself small and invisible, but nothing helped: sleep was forcibly, painfully expelling him. Headfirst. Through a hole no bigger than his fist.

He moaned low and long, hoping for divine mercy in this, his last living hour.

God only snorted and slammed a distant chest. The Lord’s furniture was on the scale of the Lord, however, and at the sound Selwyn’s head exploded in such scintillating pain that he was certain the cabinet lid had come cracking down upon it.

“Mercy!” he wailed.

“Mercy!” God retorted in a woman’s shrill voice. “Bless him!”

Selwyn kicked away the sheets and sat up. In the instant before the earth began to tip on its side, nearly spilling him out onto the floor, he saw that he was in a strange room, and there was a naked woman on the far side of it.

It was morning, too, with a livid light that burned his eyes as it passed through on its way to sear his brain.

If it was already morning, then there could not be a strange husband on the way to pummel him the rest of the way into stupefaction. But there was likely to be a strange father.

“What am I still doing here?” he groaned and collapsed onto his side.

“Still playing dead,” Trudi muttered.

“Trudi!” he gasped and sat up again. “Jesus – Trudi!”

“That’s either ‘Jesus Christ’ or just plain ‘Trudi’ you mean,” she said.

“Trudi…”

Now he remembered. He was the strange husband.

“Jesus Christ…”

“Oh, if I’m Jesus Christ, then I’m about to raise the dead.” Trudi clapped her hands, from which thunder veritably issued forth. “Get up, get up and walk, my lord!”

“Trudi…” he whimpered.

“Up! I can’t find anything in here.”

“I didn’t put anything away… I’m not your maid…”

Selwyn gingerly laid his feet on the floor: a difficult task, for while his eyes told him they were fine, they felt as if they had swollen to three times their usual size.

“That is true,” Trudi said thoughtfully. “Now I have maids. Perhaps they are being discreet on my wedding morn.” She turned aside and winked at him over her naked shoulder, quite indiscreetly.

Selwyn also saw and was reminded of her bulging profile. He was soon to be a strange father as well.

He had no idea how a man was supposed to behave on the morning after his wedding. Perhaps it was a critical moment: perhaps all the years afterwards would be shaped by their relationship this morning. He could be rough with her or weak with her – rude to her or sweet to her – and whatever happened, perhaps she would never forget or never forgive. He had to take care. Little though he loved Trudi, he did not want a marriage like his brother’s.

He shuffled up to his new wife, sheepishly smiling, though his legs seemed to be weighted with shackles. “Trudi, dear, I just want to say… uhh… ohhhhhh!” he groaned, clutching his heaving stomach.

Trudi snorted. “You have the nerve to puke this morning, of all mornings.”

“Oh, God, Trudi! You can’t… under… Oh, help me!” he whimpered. “Make it stop and I shall never drink again!”

Trudi patted her own belly. “How many mornings do you suppose I begged the Lord, ‘Make it stop and I shall never let another man touch me again’?”

“Did He?” Selwyn squeaked, dimly hoping that the Lord did in fact answer such prayers.

Trudi sighed. “You don’t even remember your own wedding night?”

She slapped him on the back, startling him nearly into making good on the promise of his nausea.

“After a few weeks of it, I felt better,” she said. “You, ungrateful wretch, should be feeling better by noon. So don’t expect me to feel sorry for you meanwhile, after what you put me through. It was your own choice to get drunk last night.”

“You don’t understand, Trudi,” he whined. “I had to. I – ”

Her eyes narrowed, and he stopped himself in time.

“I had to celebrate, I mean,” he smiled.

Trudi shook her head and turned away to pull on the nightgown she must have put aside the night before.

“Kind of you to pretend, Wyn,” she grumbled.

“What?” he whined. “I’m very happy.”

She tossed his own underclothes at him without even turning round.

He leaned heavily against the wall as he pulled them on, scowling at her back as long as he dared. It was a lie, but he thought he deserved at least a little credit for having told it.

Suddenly she turned, and the depth of her stare seemed to hint that she had somehow been watching him all the while.

“We’re good and married now, sir. It is time we had a talk.”

A tangled knot of anger and apprehension began to form in his gurgling stomach. He did not think he wanted his marriage to begin on such terms. He was the one who would be leading any “talks”.

“Listen here, Trudi,” he said sternly.

She lifted her arm and majestically pointed at the bed. “What is that?”

Selwyn scowled. He knew women were irrational and unreasonable, but this was laying it on a bit thick. They were known to take perverse pleasure in insisting that the sky was green or that water flowed uphill, but Selwyn did not intend to be tricked into admitting that the bed was a milk cow or a sailboat.

“A bed,” he growled.

“No, it is my bed,” she corrected, “and I shall sleep in it every night. You may join me in it when you like, as is your right.”

Selwyn’s mouth turned down suspiciously. He was glad she had remembered his rights, for he had briefly believed she had meant to deny them to him. But he was worried about the direction their wedding morning was taking.

“However,” she continued, “no other woman shall ever be laid in it. Is that clear?”

“Trudi!” he gasped.

“What you do outside of this room and outside of my sight is no concern of mine. But I expect the respect a lord owes his lady when we are together.”

Selwyn gaped at her. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. He did not dare provoke her wrath by asking her to confirm it and risking a misunderstanding… and yet the entire future of his marriage might depend on its first conversation.

“Are you saying I… may…”

“Have mistresses?” Trudi rolled her eyes, but she did not burst into fire and thunder. “Not in my bed. Not in my sight.”

“But I… I’m not saying I would…”

“You will,” she sighed, but it was a sigh more of resignation than of sorrow.

She seemed harmless enough that he dared step closer and slide a hand around her waist. He was reminded that there was not, in fact, any good reason not to share Trudi’s bed. If he had not caught her, he would still have been pursuing her.

“Listen here, wifey… Is this a trick?” he asked. “I think we should be honest with each other, at least this morning.”

“Am I not being more painfully honest than most women ever dare?” she murmured, slightly more sorrowfully.

Selwyn’s apprehension resumed its steady growth. “Say – you’re not angry at me, are you? I haven’t even done anything yet! And you just said I could!”

“Oh, Wyn!” she groaned. “Listen! It’s no trick. I shan’t say you may do something and then smack you when you do it! All I ask of you is that you visit my bed at least often enough to give me a child every two or three years.”

Selwyn looked up and down her profile, which was in fact quite luscious if one did not consider the belly.

“I think I shall manage to ‘visit’ you a little more often than that, wifey,” he winked.

“That is your right,” she shrugged. “But I also wish to remind you that I am the lady of this manor – and the lady of you–so you shall be putting no other woman above me.”

“Trudi!”

“Not in this house and not in society.”

“Trudi!”

“And your bastard children shall not be getting a farthing from you – is that clear? I shall bear all those who will inherit from you.”

Selwyn drew away from her slightly, hesitating. He could not object to her demands – and yet he did not think he ought to let her make demands in the first place.

“Wyn,” she sighed, “I am asking no more than what marriage requires of you, and I am offering you more than what marriage allows.”

“I know, but…” He sneaked a foolish grin up at her. “That’s why it seems like a trick.”

“It’s no trick. I am simply trying to think of what will make you happiest and make me happiest in our marriage.”

“Say…”

He thought it over for a moment, and found it to be a refreshingly manly way to deal with their situation. Perhaps she too feared becoming an Estrid to his Brede.

“That’s very thoughtful of you. Perhaps God is the one who’s tricking me, Trudi. You’re a little too good to be true.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time, briefly dizzying him with her phenomenal coordination. But when his vision cleared, the ironic resignation of her face had softened again, revealing the slight sadness that was perhaps always hiding just behind.

“If you are just, you will try to treat me so that I may say the same of you.”