Ogive gets a Christmas puppy

“Shh! What do you hear?”

The Duke’s soft voice silenced the drowsy hum of the adult conversation. Even the little children paused for a moment in their play. Alred had the bard’s gift for drawing the attention of a crowd.

Ogive listened.

The older children had not heard the call for silence, and their squeals and giggles and thumping feet still resounded in the hall. Brunhilde quickly resumed her self-​appointed task of correcting Odile for everything she was doing wrong in the matter of playing house with new dolls. Little Lord David went back to squeezing Odile’s abandoned slipper onto his own slippered foot, in disregard of his small pile of Christmas toys.

And soon the adults began to stir, looking left and right and smiling at one another in agreeable confusion. Couches creaked, skirts rustled, and Lady Gwynn swooned over a whispered guess from Princess Irene, tilting her head in a manner doubtlessly calculated to show off her bare neck to the attractive young man sitting on her other side—never mind that he was a priest.

Ogive could not fathom what they were supposed to hear. The castle was always a busy place in the hour before breakfast, and this was Christmas morn. She heard muffled shouts and footsteps creaking overhead, dogs barking, and some commotion in the inner court, but nothing she deemed unordinary.

“We give up,” Margaret said after consultation with Conrad. “What do we hear?”

“Ah!” Alred sighed. “Simply that blessed music which only the luckiest men may hear, and only for a few moments one day a year!”

“Thank God!” Godefroy interrupted. “I thought you were about to say ‘Sir Godefroy’s stomach!’”

They all laughed, but Alred’s gentle voice soon eased its way through the friendly jokes again and made itself be heard.

“Au contraire, old man,” he continued, unruffled, “I consider myself very lucky to have your stomach within serenading distance this holiday season—though it does regale us more frequently than I was letting on. However, what I meant was simply this.”

He opened his arms out over the room with the grace of a bard and the gesture of a priest blessing a multitude.

“That post-​present lull,” he explained, “after the children have surveyed the full extent of the chattels to which they now lay claim, and before they have become excruciatingly bored therewith.”

Cynewulf and the twins shrieked and stomped in the other room, making the word lull seem a bit exaggerated. Still, Ogive had to admit there was a different tone to the excitement now. She was not familiar enough with happy family Christmases nor running about and shrieking to judge just how rare or how beautiful the sound was. Her father must not have been a lucky man.

Leila snuggled against Godefroy’s shoulder and added, “And while the adults are still too groggy to do more than sit contentedly and watch.”

“Yet too hungry to sit around much longer,” Godefroy protested, staring uneasily down towards his belt.

“Your stomach makes an excellent point, old man,” Alred said. “That, or someone hid a last-​minute Christmas puppy underneath your couch.”

“Three or four Christmases ago, from the sounds of it,” Conrad said.

“Ach du Lieber!” Hetty giggled anxiously. “A dog under the furniture!”

“Oh, Papa, please!” Margaret begged.

Ogive knew that Matilda had banned dogs from inside the castle years before, when Dunstan had been small enough to be terrified of them. This was one of a certain number of rules and traditions that hung like cobwebs in the halls of Nothelm Keep long after the reasons for them had passed, in morbid honor of she who had made them. To this day Dunstan feigned a dislike of dogs to humor his father, though Britamund was certain he would have liked one.

Alred answered with a curt, “Nein,” not even glancing at his daughter, nor hesitating in the graceful swoop of his gallant seated bow to the ladies.

“My groggy dears,” Alred continued smoothly, “perhaps you will indulge us grumbling gentlemen and accompany us to table. Advent season is over,” he said with a sly glance across the room at Father Dominic, “and Hetty tells me that it is again permitted for us to have candy before breakfast.”

“Ach, Alred!” Hetty giggled.

“My beauty?” he prompted.

Hetty grasped her heavy skirts and leaned forward, and at this sign from their hostess, everyone over the age of ten began to stir.

Then Dunstan yelped, “Wait!” quite as if he had been pricked by a pin.

Ogive sniffed. If there were indeed a forgotten pin remaining in Britamund’s gown, he should have found it long before, given that he must have clutched every last part of her body to his in the course of the morning.

“My son?” Alred prompted in the other direction.

“I have one last—uh… gift for everyone. Or… not a gift, I mean. A thing!”

“A thing!” Britamund groaned.

“Ah!” Alred said. “I thought your sweet nothings bore a note of sweet something this morning.” He rubbed his hands together and chuckled wickedly to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, Dunstan has a thing.”

“A thing to announce!” Dunstan added. Ogive could not see his face from where she sat, but she could see the color of his ears.

“Oh, I suppose I know what this is!” Gwynn squealed.

She clapped her hands and wriggled her behind on the horsehair cushion, making the priest beside her sit up at abrupt attention. Having spent the morning being jostled by Dunstan’s and Britamund’s squirming, Ogive believed she had some idea how he felt.

“I hope you will allow him the pleasure of announcing it anyway, my dear,” Gwynn’s father gently scolded.

“I shall allow us all the pleasure, but Father, you must send for the Old Man!”

Margaret immediately shouted, “Old Man!”

“Margaret!”

“What? He’s right there! Shall I send a letter?”

“Ladies do not shout,” Gwynn pouted.

Godefroy tipped back his head and bellowed, “Old Man! Get in here or I shall be obliged to eat your curly head, as all the ladies threaten to do! With melted butter,” he confided to an amused Father Dominic.

Giggling breathlessly, Britamund thumped off of her husband’s lap and attempted to pry and shove and tickle him off the couch, against his sheepish protests: “But they already know!”

Ogive steadied her feet on the floor and pushed back as the cushion slid ominously towards the edge of the couch, carrying the three of them with it.

Cynewulf stomped in and grumbled, “What? We’re not hungry yet!”

His father said, “Old Man, your brother has a thing he wishes to announce to our family and friends this morning.”

“Oh, I suppose I already know what that is,” Cynewulf said sourly. “May I be excused?”

“No, you may not. Dunstan?”

Dunstan was picking his way across the floor between feet and toys and toddlers, hunching his shoulders as though he meant to hide the crimson color of his ears. Watching him, Ogive wondered how Caedwulf would deliver the same sort of news years hence—perhaps two, perhaps three Christmases from now if the dates aligned. It seemed a very long time.

Just when Dunstan had stopped beside David’s mismatched feet and straightened self-​importantly, Gwynn made a whinnying cry and launched herself off the far couch, leaping as high as her brother’s shoulders. Dunstan caught her close, and they clung together a moment, perfectly matched, all green wool and velvet and glossy black hair, in a silence that silenced the crowd.

Ogive was almost moved. Her own elder brother had merely kissed her cheek goodbye and instructed her to do honor to her country, though he knew they would likely never meet again.

Then Gwynn slipped free and fell back to earth, raucous with that high-​pitched, affected giggling of hers. She flounced her skirts above her ankles and skipped past Cynan and the little girls, only to thump down between Ogive and Britamund, making the entire couch squawk within its wooden frame.

“So affecting!” she moaned. “Sister!”

She threw her arms around Britamund’s shoulders and squeezed, lifting herself halfway off the cushion and kicking her feet up behind her. Ogive dug her fingernails into the bolster pillow at her side. She was eager to get to the breakfast table after all, if only because she would have a chair to herself.

Britamund embraced Gwynn, but she said slyly, “You’re going to feel silly when he simply announces we’re going to get a puppy.”

“You are?” Cynewulf cried. “Father, I want a puppy! Hetty!”

Alred said, “No and no. Nobody is getting a puppy.”

Then he turned his face to his son, and with his softest voice, as if beginning the sweetest tale he had ever told, he prompted, “Dunstan?”

Dunstan had a fair, gentle voice of his own, but he could have made himself no finer introduction. Alred had the bard’s gift of sweeping the emotions of a crowd up in his own. Fifteen-​year-​old maiden though she was, he made Ogive feel something of a father’s aching pride. And when she looked at Dunstan she saw that he was feeling it too—though Dunstan, of course, had reasons of his own.

“Thank you, Father,” Dunstan murmured. Then he deepened his voice and spoke more clearly, as he and his father did when beginning a well-​practiced poem. “Several weeks ago I sent a letter to Yware, telling him what I am about to say this morning, in the hope he would receive it in time for Christmas. And so I may truthfully say how very, very happy I am that I am able to share this news with all of my family on this day.”

He had begun speaking to the room, but his gaze settled on Alred alone at the end. Ogive glanced over at the Duke and saw him white-​faced, his hand clamped over his mouth, and his black eyes wide and unblinking in terror of tears.

Bard’s son as he was, Dunstan knew how to speak gently to an entire crowd and still deliver to one man the message he wanted him to hear. He knew just how subtly to stress the all, and he knew how to wield his silence, too: his pause was painful, but then Dunstan was the only resident of Nothelm who sometimes chose not to tiptoe around the Duke’s sensitive feelings.

The stares of many eyes returned to Dunstan’s face, Ogive’s among them, pressing him to go on out of pity for Alred. And just as firmly Dunstan’s silence bore down on his father.

Then Cynewulf slyly chanted, “I know what you two have been doing!”

“Cynewulf Sebright!” Alred gasped, shattering the young bard’s spell.

“What? That’s what you explained to me, isn’t it?”

Most of the people not directly involved in little Lord Cynewulf’s uprearing began to chuckle.

“Young man!” Alred snapped, reverting to a still more ominous appellation than the boy’s full name.

Hetty hastened to smooth matters over. “Yes, dear, but some of our family and friends have not had quite the same explanation, so we would not want to confuse them.”

She tilted her head towards the floor, either at Margaret or at the two tiny girls with their dolls, but canny Cynewulf looked to his side and asked, “Who? Father Dominic? Don’t you know, Father?”

Sir Godefroy laughed aloud.

Father Dominic quickly replied, “I know how you came to be.”

Cynewulf challenged, “How?”

Hetty gasped and clapped her hand over the cross at her throat. Before Alred could shout, Dominic said coolly, “A stork brought you on his back.”

“No, he did not!” Cynewulf scoffed. “How stupid do you think I am? A baby would fall right off the stork’s back, since babies can’t hold on. Besides, why do you think Hetty’s belly is so fat right now?”

Hetty made a shrill squeak, as though she too were plagued by pins.

Dominic smiled slyly across the room at the Duke and suggested, “Perhaps too much candy during Advent?”

“Ach du Lieber!”

Poor Hetty went nearly as red as her robes, and if that smile had been aimed for her she might have fainted away. But everyone from Margaret to Cynan was howling with laughter, and a pink-​faced Britamund most hysterically of all. At last Alred was obliged to chuckle wryly and sigh.

“Very well, Old Man. Now, suppose you let Dunstan get on with his thing?”

“I shall explain to you later,” Cynewulf promised the priest. Dominic nodded gratefully.

Dunstan cleared his throat and wiped his eyes.

“As I was saying,” he resumed with a bow. “Ever since I had the good fortune to marry Britamund, not a day has passed without something happening to make me believe that I am the happiest man alive… that nothing could possibly make me happier…”

Cynewulf hurriedly assured Dominic, “I shall tell you about that part, too.”

After an instant’s reflection Alred sat bolt upright and howled, “Cynewulf!”

But it was too late. Godefroy laughed so loudly that he was obliged to pound his fist on the arm of the couch to keep himself from falling over, and Leila collapsed against him. Margaret and Conrad hid their faces against one another’s shaking shoulders. Cynan and Ogive turned red with embarrassment at their uncontrollable laughter, Dunstan had collapsed against the mantel, and Britamund had tears streaming down her cheeks by this time. Even Father Dominic’s face was squinted up like a screaming baby’s as he fought to hold back his laughter behind his hand, and Hetty giggled and gibbered in two languages. Only Gwynn and Irene, staring at one another across the room, appeared to not quite understand what was so amusing, but even they could not help but laugh, any more than the children, all the way down to little Lord David in the corner.

“Good gravy, Dunstan!” Britamund hooted. “Simply tell them already, before the Old Man makes me burst apart at the seams!”

Dunstan shouted over the cacophony, “Brit and I are expecting a baby for Midsummer! There!” He ducked his head between his shoulders again and grinned.

The laughter glided easily into cheers and congratulations. Happiness was happiness, Ogive thought: a warmth, a giddiness, and a feeling of contentment that families such as her own approximated with wine. And as with wine, everyone looked more beautiful, more dear. Ogive felt almost beautiful and beloved herself—almost part of the family.

Then Alred spoke softly, “My children,” and once again all eyes turned to him, all fondly smiling, and some full of tears.

“A puppy!” one of the twins cried out from the hall, precipitating a headlong rush of the other young children out to see. “A puppy!” was the general refrain once they arrived.

The blue-​white light of a winter morning glowed past the pillar for a moment longer as everyone stared, and then the great door closed with a slam.

They heard Cynewulf squeal, “A puppy! Let me see!”

Alred mumbled dazedly to himself, “No one is getting a puppy…”

And then a new voice called out gruffly, “Out of my way, runts! Or I shall squeeze this puppy! over your heads until he leaks.”

Ogive sucked in her breath, and the wind she made seemed to blow the attention of everyone remaining in the room towards herself. Caedwulf was home! And they were all looking at her!

She heard his bold, unfaltering boots clomp across the hall, in spite of the children clamoring at his feet—for they knew anyone foolish enough to stand in Caedwulf’s way would simply be mowed down.

He appeared in the doorway—all pink-​cheeked and tangle-​headed still from his ride—all tall and broad-​shouldered and square-​chinned and magnificent—and he stared straight down the room at Ogive and lifted a squirming puppy high.

“Happy!” he beamed. “Meet Yappy!”

Ogive squeaked, “A puppy!”

The children burst into exclamations again—“Is he for Ogive?”—“May we pet him?”

Ogive felt a hand on her wrist and looked up to see Dunstan come to help her to her feet.

“Merry Christmas all!” Caedwulf said, grinning around the room, and still holding the puppy out of reach.

“Caedwulf,” Britamund pouted, “you have just utterly spoiled the effect of the thing that Dunstan just announced.”

“And what is that thing, dear sister?”

Cynewulf whined, “Brit’s going to have a baby in the summer. Let me see the puppy!”

“Name of God! You’re going to be an uncle, and you want to play with a pokey old puppy?”

The puppy huffed and grunted and scrabbled against Caedwulf’s wrists with its hind feet, but at last it abandoned itself to a volley of high-​pitched yaps of frustration.

“A puppy!” Alred groaned.

Ogive finally tottered close enough to reach up and gingerly pat the puppy’s fuzzy belly, careful to avoid any risk of tongue.

“Is he for me?”

“Happy Christmas, Merry! He’s one of Queen Margaret’s deerhounds—now you and Eadie will have a pair!”

“Margaret gave you one of her deerhound pups?” Britamund asked.

“Not to me—to Happy. The dog of queens!” He lifted his brows and looked Ogive up and down, concluding with a wink. “Close enough. I did have to do a little convincing—but what am I if not convincing?”

He fluttered his lashes at Ogive until she snorted. She was obliged to twist her mouth into a pucker to prevent herself from grinning like a gaby.

“I told her how Ogive says I flirt like a dog,” Caedwulf explained to his audience, “and how she would like to ease herself into it by flirting with a puppy.”

“You told her that?” Ogive cried. “The Queen of Scots?”

“Uh oh, boys!” Caedwulf turned and hurried to deposit the puppy in the outstretched hands of the children. “Better get this pup to safety—Happy’s about to blow!”

Ogive stomped after him. “You told the Queen of Scots that I wish to flirt with this dog?”

“It worked, didn’t it? Not even Orlaith of Leinster has one of Margaret’s deerhounds.”

“Oh ho ho!” Ogive crowed. “And speaking of Orlaith, your father is going to tan your hide while it’s still on your back, Caedwulf! Going to straight from Aed’s hall to Dunfermline! Aed must have gone through the roof!”

“That’s not the half of it!” Britamund groaned. “Wait until you hear everything that’s been happening here!”

Caedwulf threw an arm around Ogive’s waist and snagged her tight against his hip, putting himself out of range of her scowls.

“I spent the night at Selwyn’s last night. I heard all about it from Trudi. Aed’s certainly not going to hold that little trip against me after what happened with Maire. And besides, I had a very good reason: I was on a mission to get a Christmas gift for my betrothed! Certainly not the makings of a diplomatic incident.”

“You, Caedwulf?” Britamund scoffed.

“I, Caedwulf! I never had a betrothed at Christmas before, did I? So what do you know what about I may or may not do for her? And besides.”

He jiggled Ogive far enough away from his shoulder that he could look down into her face.

“Now you have a golden excuse to write to Her Majesty to thank her, with continuing correspondence over the coming months to inform her of the latest antics of her darling doggy’s precocious offspring. And you aren’t even Crown Princess yet!”

Ogive gasped as the opportunities became clear: she, still only the second daughter of the Count of Flanders, already entering into intimate correspondence with the Queen of Scots. Her diplomatic career had begun!

“Caedwulf! You’re…”

“Brilliant! I know! Merry Christmas, Happy!” He clapped her on the back. “You see, Brit?” he smirked at his sister. “What wouldn’t I do for her?”

“I can see one thing you ought to do right now,” Britamund said wickedly.

“What’s that?”

Britamund pointed up. Caedwulf lifted his head and started, as if he had seen the ceiling hurtling towards his face.

“Name of God! Nothelm! Mistletoe! I always forget!”

For the hundredth time Ogive regretted ever having mentioned to the Princess that Caedwulf had not kissed her yet. Ninety-​nine times Britamund had already tried more or less subtly to smash their faces together, and each time Ogive was a little more humiliated when she failed. She tried to shake only one side of her head, but Britamund had locked eyes with her brother, and neither saw.

“But she can’t go straight to kissing me! She hasn’t even begun practicing on the puppy yet!”

“You know the rule,” Britamund purred.

“Aren’t there any bylaws this year? On what day of the week were you born, Happy?”

“No bylaws this year,” Britamund said, flushing pink with her sense of victory. “Just a lot of passionate kissing.”

“Passionate kissing, you say?” Caedwulf looked skeptically down at Ogive. “Whom have you been passionately kissing in my absence, Happy?”

“No one!” Ogive cried, gasping like a fish. “Certainly not!”

Caedwulf laid a hand on her waist and spun her around backwards. For a terrifying second she believed he was flinging her down onto the floor, but he caught her in the crook of his opposite elbow and held her helpless, bent back across his forearm.

This was it, then. It was about to happen. They would not even practice with a few chaste pecks—they would skip straight to a “passionate kiss.”

Ogive’s knees warmed and softened, and a flock of butterflies tore through her belly. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears. This was so much better than wine. She felt beautiful and beloved. She felt her soul soaring up into the misty sea-​hazel of Caedwulf’s eyes.

Then he slid her from his right arm to his left. “Just a moment,” he smiled.

He slipped his hand into his pocket and fished around. Ogive imagined vaguely that he had yet another gift for her—jewelry, perhaps. Perhaps a ring.

Instead he pulled out the tip of his own thumb clenched between his fingers. He buffed it on his tunic and held it up between their eyes for her to inspect.

“I’m afraid I rubbed off some of the freckles playing marbles with the Scottish princes.”

He tapped his thumb against her nose and slipped it free to wave his empty hand in the air.

“I hope they grow back,” he whispered.

He gently kissed the tip of her nose, and nothing more. He straightened and pulled her up to stand beside him.

“You’ll be glad to know I won their marbles, though!” he laughed. “Even if I had to give them back. Wouldn’t want to cause a diplomatic incident, now.”

“You call—that—a passionate kiss?” Britamund demanded.

“Who said it had to be passionate? Let the poor girl practice on Yappy for a while. That animal certainly knows how to kiss! What about you, woman?” he asked accusingly. “I wonder what you have been up to, lately?”

Britamund giggled. “Ask the Old Man!”