Flann makes a mew

Araphel did not know what Flann had meant by the words “see what Liadan thinks”, but her tone had been ominous. Still, he was so desperate to see his daughter that he would have gone even had he suspected she would be the last thing he would ever see.

He had not glimpsed so much as the distant gray-​​bundled form of her body in weeks, and he had not looked into her face in two months. The last time he had held her she had been too small to do more than squint and snuffle. Now he thought she would be old enough to hold his gaze and smile – if only she would! Perhaps that was what Flann wanted to see.

Certainly the Abbot did not smile. Aelfden was so accustomed to being surprised and annoyed by Sebastien that he did not waste any time wondering at his presence.

“I beg your pardon, Flann,” he said, the chill to his voice proving his remark was truly intended for other ears than hers. “I had thought you would not be disturbed.”

“It’s I was disturbing him, Father,” Flann said smartly. Araphel appreciated her fairness until she spoke again in an evident challenge. “It’s at his prayers I found him. Is he often praying at night?”

“Sometimes I find him there,” Aelfden admitted.

Araphel knew Aelfden supposed it was done deliberately, to annoy him when he wanted peace. Sometimes it was. He therefore appreciated the Abbot’s fairness, and nodded slightly in recognition.

Aelfden merely closed his eyes and turned the baby’s head back towards his to kiss. She had been trying to twist it around far enough to look at Araphel, but it seemed the Abbot did not intend to allow him this kindness, though the baby was beginning to fuss in frustration.

Flann asked, “How was she, Father?”

Her voice was gentle as Araphel had not heard it since the beginning of the year, but it was different now: soft and rich with a sad yearning that sang with his own. She saw her baby every day, of course, but they would never again be as close as they had been through those first nine months. She knew the pain of separation too.

Araphel felt his soul blossoming out to hers with love, so full and lush he was certain she must have been aware of it. Again he began to believe she had come for him, even unknowing, but through it all she kept her head bowed to Aelfden’s.

“I was not too long?” she asked wistfully.

“No, no,” Aelfden murmured. “She was sweet and good.”

Aelfden lifted the baby down from his shoulder to pass her to her mother, and at last Araphel was able to see her little face. How much older she was! And how much like herself she appeared! No longer merely a pretty newborn like any other, but a little person all her own, only with Araphel’s immortal eyes, and hints of Brude’s broad mouth and chin.

Araphel had never had a daughter before – had never had a beautiful child at all. He would have adored her if she had merely appeared whole and human. This exquisite being could only have been a gift: she was so much more than he deserved.

He began to regret some of what he had said and thought when he had suffered most in the chapel, but even so, he was also more certain than ever that he would not yield up this gift for anything Creation could offer – not even salvation, so long as she could have hers.

Liadan watched him solemnly as she passed between hands. She kept her own tiny paws folded shyly over her breast rather than reaching out for him, but she strained her neck to keep her heavy head aimed towards his as long as she could.

“Did you have a nice chat with the Abbot, dear?” Flann asked her baby breathlessly. “Were you telling him all the sins of you, little scamp?”

“She said she had nothing to confess,” the Abbot said gravely, “and I believed her.”

“I don’t know about that.” Flann lifted her baby to her face and gave a strange giggling laugh. “I hear she likes to flirt with the men. Don’t you, darling? Did you smile for the man? Did you?”

Liadan tipped back her head and flailed her arms and legs as if to swim through the air.

“Never has so fair a lady smiled so long on me,” Aelfden chuckled. “Therefore it could not have been flirting.”

“Did you then?” Flann gasped. “Did you smile for the man, darling? I knew you would, my wee minx! And so I brought a fine man for you! Ever so fine!”

Liadan began to whimper, and she was not only waving her arms now but shaking them stiffly. There was a razor edge to Flann’s teasing such as one never thought to hear on a mother’s voice. Girls spoke so to other girls before yanking on their pigtails or shoving them down into the muck.

Flann turned the baby around and held her abruptly out to Araphel.

“Smile for him, darling! Smile!”

Liadan cringed in startled confusion, and Araphel likewise. Now he wished he had not come, or at least that he had insisted on talking to the end of the matter with Flann before coming to see the baby. He did not know what she meant by “see what Liadan thinks”, but it appeared more than ominous.

His daughter was confused and frightened, however, and he could not leave her so. With the risk he had taken in speaking to Flann, it was possible she would never be so near to him again.

“Eh bien, ma pupuce!” he gasped. “Quelle vadrouille!”

Liadan took a sharp breath and stopped her squirming to stare up at him.

He gently squeezed her dangling foot and grinned at her. “Toute la nuit elle sort danser sur ses pattes de fée, et jusqu’au soir elle dort la grasse matinée! Eh, ma puce?”

The baby’s face bloomed into a shy, surprised smile, as if she found the idea of dancing all night and sleeping all day novel but nevertheless enchanting.

Sebastien’s sometimes sickly body seemed likely to crumble beneath the weight of all the love it was asked to hold. Araphel was so delighted he had forgotten about Flann.

“I knew it!” she snarled. “I knew it!” she sobbed. “Take her! Take her! She’s wanting anyone but me!”

She shoved the baby into his arms, so roughly that they might have dropped her if he had not taken care.

In his fright Araphel gasped, “Treasure!” Liadan threw out a little arm to try to catch her mother before she jerked away.

“She hates me! She hates me!”

“Never…” the Abbot soothed.

“She smiles at you! She smiles at him! She smiles at everybody! And she never, never smiles at me! Never once! She even smiles at the cat!” she hissed, as if that proved the girl’s depravity.

“Ach! At the cat, you’re saying?” Araphel asked. Brude’s voice would have been sure and strong and comforting, but he would have to make do with Sebastien’s anxious quaver. “I’m thinking that’s the problem, then.”

Flann was startled out of her outrage by this strange remark, but not out of her tears. “What about the cat?” she whimpered.

“It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all for months,” he sighed wearily, “and none believing. If she’s smiling at the cat, it’s because she is a flea.”

Flann tried to sniffle and snort at once, and coming together they made her seem so very Flann-​​like that he thought Sebastien would die from love.

“Eh, ma puce?” he asked the baby. “You smile at me to say, ‘At last! A man who understands me.’”

“And so why is she smiling at the good Abbot?” Flann challenged.

“She’s saying to herself, ‘A man who wears a hair shirt every day, he won’t be minding a wee biting flea like me!’”

Aelfden snorted and did not sniffle, but this unwillingness to smile was so Aelfden-​​like that fond Araphel acknowledged it with a teasing wink that could as easily have come from Brude as from Sebastien.

“And what about me?” Flann asked stiffly.

Araphel knew her well enough to hear her hidden pain. He began to fear she had not been exaggerating – perhaps the baby truly never had smiled at her.

He also heard her hidden hope. Somehow he would have to show her how to make their daughter smile. It felt ominously like a last chance.

He lifted the baby off his shoulder so he could more comically shrug. “Be a cat.”

Flann rolled her eyes.

“Try!”

Having wasted the grand gesture already, Flann had nothing left but rolling her eyes in the opposite direction.

“Try.” He held out the baby and stared at Flann until she was shamed into taking her.

“What am I supposed to be doing?” she muttered. “Licking my own behind? Jumping on the furniture?”

“If you’re spry enough to do it, I’m thinking she’ll be laughing out loud. But perhaps you’ll be saving that for when ‘the good Abbot’ is not witnessing,” he winked.

Flann frowned darkly enough that he knew she was trying not to laugh. Still, her eyes were truly sad.

“What shall I be doing, then?”

“Try to meow.”

Flann rolled her eyes again, but she said, “Meow.”

“You must be meowing,” he sighed, “not saying ‘meow.’ ”

“Me-​​ow!” she groaned. “Ach! Take her!” she blubbered. “It’s a lot of nonsense! She won’t do it!”

She held the girl out to him, but he pushed her gently away. “Of course it’s a lot of nonsense! It’s a baby she is, Flann! She’s too little for the keen Scots wit of you! Meow for her!”

Flann said the word “Meow” at a slightly higher pitch.

“Nom de nom!” he groaned. “Must I be dragging a cat in here to show you how it’s done?”

“I can’t do it!” she pouted.

“Ach, Flann! I said ‘be a cat’, not ‘be a sourpuss.’”

“I can’t!” she sobbed.

“Flann! You aren’t trying!”

But he knew she was afraid to try because she was afraid to fail. She too seemed to see it as a last chance.

He laid his palms over the backs of her hands and curled his fingers over their daughter’s shoulders, hoping to reassure them both, and to give each confidence in the other.

“If you can’t be a cat, then start by being a kitten. What do the wee kittens say?” he crooned, as if Flann were a child herself.

Flann lifted the baby to her nose and made a tiny but convincing mew.

Araphel held his breath. She had been hopeful enough to trust him, and she had trusted him enough to do as he asked.

Now Liadan would either smile or she would not. He feared what would become of the three of them if she would not. Flann would never trust him so far again.

“Are you hearing what I’m hearing, pupuce?” he murmured slyly.

Flann trusted him enough to mew again, still more loudly and more adorably.

He could not see the baby’s face, but even as lovely as she was, he could not imagine that anything more beautiful could have been happening upon it than what he was seeing on her mother’s.

“Liadan!” she whispered. “Liadan! My sweet baby!”

Liadan opened her mouth and panted loudly, kicking her feet one by one like an overturned turtle.

“Liadan! Liadan! Liadan!”

“It is what I am trying to tell everybody for weeks!” Araphel gasped.

“This sweet baby a flea!” she scoffed, but her laughter and tears coming together made her so exquisitely Flann-​​like that he thought Sebastien’s body would die merely from longing to hold her.

“I am no dog, but I’m knowing my fleas,” Araphel winked.

“My sweet baby! My sweet baby!” Flann laughed, holding the baby against her breast and holding her up to gaze at her smile by turns.

Liadan waved her arms and panted like a puppy: an odd sound, but when she turned her head Araphel spied the corner of a grin. She was laughing too.

“Father, leave us,” Flann said, breathless and smiling.

She was too happy even to notice the strangeness of what she was asking. Perhaps, too, it only seemed natural to her – as she had in the past fearlessly asked to be left alone with Brude. Araphel thought Sebastien would split in two from being so stuffed full of love.

But the Abbot cried, “I will not!”

Flann murmured “Father…” and stopped laughing as the reality of what she had asked began to settle over her.

“It’s delighted I am, Flann, if your dear baby is happy and smiling for you, but I shall not be leaving two unmarried young people alone at night for all that.”

Flann settled Liadan in the crook of her arm and looked a question at Araphel.

He smiled slightly and with his eyes tried to make her understand that it was no matter – that there would be time enough to be alone together now that she knew.

She did not seem to understand – or perhaps had understood too well.

“Then marry us, Father,” she said, smartly defiant.

The Abbot leapt up from the bench so suddenly that his robes were slow to settle.

“I will not!” he gasped. “Marry you! To him!”

“You’re a priest, aren’t you?” she challenged.

“Aye, but that does not mean I’m obliged to marry any two people who ask me! On this night! I wouldn’t be trusting you to walk home alone tonight, and you’re wanting me to see you off on a lifelong journey with – this–man!”

Flann swallowed so loudly it was almost a gulp. Araphel turned away in the hope of sparing her any more of Aelfden’s rancor against Sebastien.

“After what he did to your sister!” Aelfden choked. “What wicked power do you have over these young ladies, sir?”

“It’s I was asking you, Father,” Flann reminded him softly. Liadan began to cry.

“Aye, Flann, aye, but what were you thinking? If your baby is smiling for an ugly old man like me, she’ll be smiling for anyone by and by. It is not so much to his credit if she smiled for you now. Not to the point of marrying him! Him!”

“I am sorry, Father,” Araphel interrupted, switching to a cold and accented English. “I believe these two ladies are fatigued, and we shall not trouble them more with our querelles of men. Isn’t it?”

Aelfden took a deep breath and said nothing. Araphel knew he was furiously scolding himself for having let himself grow furious.

“Good night to you, Flann,” Araphel said, trying to put all his love into his voice since he could not put it into his words.

“Good night to you…” she murmured.

“Et bonne nuit à toi, ma puce.” He pinched the baby’s tiny fairy foot between his fingers and shook it gently. “On dansera une autre fois, jusqu’à l’aube, si tu voudras.”

He dared to bend low and lay a kiss on Liadan’s forehead, hoping her mother would find it there later.

“What did you say?” Flann mumbled.

“I shall tell you next time we meet.”

He wanted to give her a chance to agree – to admit that there would be a next time. She said nothing, however, and he could not permit himself to wait.

“Good night, Father,” he nodded and walked briskly for the door.

As he rounded the corner, Flann called out, “The peace of God on you.”

It was her family’s most sacred blessing, but it was the first time she had said it to him without adding “my love”. He heard the echoes of the extra words in their silence. He would lie awake wondering whether she had meant for him to hear.