Sigefrith asks a favor of Matilda

“Matilda, dear,” Alred said softly.

Matilda looked up from her embroidery and smiled her dreamy smile. “Oh, Sigefrith,” she said when she saw who stood behind her husband. “We don’t often see you here so late.”

“Sigefrith has a favor he would like to ask you.”

“Anything for you, my beloved King,” she said, holding up a hand for him to kiss.

Alred shook his head. She was another woman entirely when she was expecting – she was lovelier than ever, of course, but also more gentle. He hoped that would make things easier.

“What are you making?” Sigefrith asked her as he sat beside her.

“Oh, Sigefrith, this must be a dreadful favor you’re asking if you preface it with an inquiry about my embroidery. I’m making a cushion for a sort of chair or couch that Ethelmund Ashdown is making me.”

“Like the furniture he made for Sir Leila,” Alred supplied.

“Oh, do you like that sort of furniture, from Leila’s country?” Sigefrith asked.

Alred shook his head slightly.

“I liked what he made for your nursery,” Matilda said. “I shall like to have such a couch to lie upon when I am feeling enormous and lazy.” She smiled at her husband.

“Perhaps I shall have Ethelmund put wheels on it and I can simply push you around in it,” Alred said, caressing her flushed cheek.

“If you do, Yware will only steal it and ride it down the hill,” she giggled.

“We might do that as well.”

Sigefrith coughed.

“Oh, Sigefrith, what did you want to ask me?” she said, turning to him again.

“It’s this, Matilda: Leofric has been gone for over a week now, and we don’t know when we shall see him again. And we don’t like the idea of leaving Leila alone out at that castle with only the servants. We wonder – I mean I wonder whether you would be kind enough to invite her and her babies to stay with you until Leofric returns.”

“With me?”

“Here with us, he means,” Alred said. “We have room.”

“Room? Of course we have room. That’s not…”

“Matilda,” Sigefrith said, “I know you had a difficult time accepting Leila, because you are Eadgith’s friend. But you see, Eadgith is here now, and Leila isn’t going away. And the poor girl has done nothing wrong – ”

“Why don’t you take her, then?”

“I have Eadgith and her daughter staying with me. I can hardly – ”

“So send Eadgith and her daughter to me, and you can take Leila and her babies.”

“Matilda, she is my own cousin. I can’t send her away and take Leila in.”

“Why not? You took Leila in before.”

“That was different.”

“‘That was different.’ Oh, that explains everything. Previously you were unhappy with me because I would not receive Leila, and now you won’t, but you still expect me to.”

“I would, but you understand I can’t have them both at the same time.”

“Matilda,” Alred said, “Sir Leila is a good little woman – ”

“Girl is more like it. She’s less than half Leofric’s age.”

“Girl, then, if you prefer,” Sigefrith said. “A lonely, frightened girl far from her home and far from her family. And for all we know, her husband treated her as roughly as he did Eadgith.”

“And she’s clever, Matilda,” Alred said. “If you would only talk to her, you would see that you have more in common with her than you ever did with Mau – ” he interrupted himself and blushed painfully.

“It’s all right, Alred,” Sigefrith sighed. “I had noticed that our wives have little in common.”

At first Matilda had been turning her head from side to side as they each spoke to her, but Alred saw she had finally come to stare down into her lap and purse her little mouth. She wouldn’t argue any longer. Now he had only to get her to agree.

“Dearest,” he whispered, putting an arm over her shoulders, “you’re a happy woman, aren’t you?”

She nodded reluctantly, but then looked up at him and smiled as, he thought, she remembered why.

“Then can you not find it in your happy heart to help an unhappy woman?”

“You make it difficult to say no.”

“That is because it is a request that no truly noble lady would refuse.”

“Now you make it impossible,” she chuckled, laying her head against his shoulder.

He looked over at Sigefrith, who was giving them a broad smile that conveyed something almost paternal, but the tilt of his eyebrows made Alred wonder whether there wasn’t a little sadness in it as well.