“What are you reading, Alred?”
Alred looked up from his book and smiled. Matilda was looking a little tired, a little troubled, but far better than she had been in the last weeks of her pregnancy. And her tiny baby lay upon her shoulder – she was as possessive of little Cynewulf as he had been of baby Margaret.
“I am reading the Book of Isaiah, my darlings. I find it ever more interesting. Why don’t you sit down, Matilda, and let me have that baby to warm my lap a while?”
“Why don’t you let me keep the baby for now, and I shall warm your lap later?”
He laughed. “You warm my lap merely by standing before me, my beauty. But I insist. I don’t want the lad to forget what his father looks like.”
“He need only look in a mirror if he wants to remember.”
“Still believe he looks like me? I think he looks like a crotchety old man.”
“You’re dreadful. He looks just like you.”
“Are you trying to tell me I look like a crotchety old man? You may have something there, Matilda, but I remind you that you are older than I.”
“And crotchetier?”
“I didn’t say so,” he smiled. “Thank you,” he said after she had deposited the baby in his lap.
The boy grasped one of his father’s thumbs in each of his little hands and squeezed. He didn’t like to lie on his back, but he did like holding thumbs, so he decided it was not worth crying over, and he closed his eyes instead and prepared to go back to sleep.
“Why are you poking around in stupid old Isaiah again?” she asked after she had pulled a chair up next to his. “I thought you liked the poetic parts of the Bible. Is Theobald bothering you with his sins of the fathers again?”
“It’s funny you mention that, Matilda. I was only just thinking about that verse, because I found the verse I was seeking on the page opposite it. Listen to this: ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’”
“I do love to hear you reading Latin,” she sighed admiringly.
“Were you hearing or listening, Matilda?” he scolded.
“I was listening. Are you arguing theological points with the devil himself now?”
“No, with Maud, rather,” he chuckled. “Indirectly.”
“What?”
“She finally told Sigefrith what happened in the garden last October.”
“Oh!”
“But she seems to be a bit muddled in the details. She told Sigefrith that it was Lucifer who attacked her.”
“Oh my!”
“Apparently it was not as bad as we had feared. She claims that the man only kissed her, and he must have held her, for she said she couldn’t call out or get away. But she said he did nothing more.”
“Oh, I hope it’s so! But why did she say it was Lucifer?”
“She told Sigefrith that he fell from the sky.”
“Well… he climbed over the wall, didn’t he?” Matilda asked.
“As far as we know.”
“Oh my,” she sighed. “The poor woman! She has been so devout lately – always reading her Bible, always praying – and now when a man jumps out of a tree, she believes it’s the devil himself. No wonder she’s so distraught.”
“Precisely what Sigefrith says.”
“So what does Isaiah say?”
“Only what I read. Father Brandt recommends I look in the Book of the Apocalypse for the rest of the story.”
“That always makes for edifying reading,” she said wryly.
“I rather like it. It’s quite poetic in parts. ‘And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.’”
“Such a memory you have,” she sighed. “I can never remember where I put my thimble from moment to moment.”
“That is because you are growing a crotchety old lady, and soon you will be forgetting where you left your head.”
“I’m not so old as to forget where and how to kick a man where it hurts, my lord!”
“Fortunately I have a small child here for to protect my lap. You must content yourself with kicking me in the teeth,” he grinned, “and if you could knock out the one that is bothering me, I should be much obliged.”
Chapters
Was Maud just remembering a passage out of Isaiah?