Alred Comes Home

It was quite late when Alred came in, so he was surprised to see the Queen sitting in his hall with the baby sleeping in her lap. “Oh, good evening, Your Majesty,” he said brightly. “I was just out for a walk in the woods with the dogs. It looks like there’s a family of boars in there and…”

Maud rose majestically as he spoke and laid Yware in his arms. “Put the little lord to bed and then go see Matilda. I am going home.” She left, without another word.

Alred bounced the baby, staring after Maud. He always said she was a little haughty, but this was surely a new pinnacle of haughtiness.

He shrugged and carried Yware up to the bedroom. “Where’s your mistress?” he asked a valet.

“Her Grace is with his young Lordship.”

“Oh well, I’ll wait for her here.” Luckily the baby was still sleeping, and Alred was able to tuck him into his cradle without hearing so much as a mew out of him.

He stretched out on the bed and returned to the thoughts he had been busy with during his stroll in the woods. He spent a good part of his days planning the jokes he was going to tell Githa the next morning. He hadn’t had so much fun since… why, since he was courting Matilda Cild, funny as that seemed. But then he had spent his days writing poetry. Jokes were ever so much more fun.

He was so lost in his imaginings that he didn’t hear Matilda come in until she was standing next to the bed and barked, “Get up!” Then, to the valet, “Leave us.”

Alred looked up at her and smiled, but the smile faded as he saw the look on her face. If he didn’t know Matilda as well as he did, he would almost say she had been crying. He promptly got out of bed.

“I saw you with Githa today.”

He felt all the fun draining out of him. So, that was the end of that. Ah well, he had known it couldn’t last forever. Of course it was all a misunderstanding… once he had explained, they could go back to the way they were… but the way she looked at him made him feel like a criminal.

“Never mind what you want to say to me, I saw what I saw. I have given you two heirs, and nearly paid for them with my life. I have done my duty to you. You have not kept your word to me.”

“Matilda, wait—”

“Silence!” she hissed. “I will remain here and raise your sons and stand before the world as your wife, but on two conditions. First—”

“Matilda!”

She slapped him hard across the face.

Alred was stunned.

“First, you will see that—that—woman—no more. And second, you will never lay your hands on me again, though I lie dying.”

“It’s medicine!” he gasped.

His statement was so unexpected that Matilda lost her momentum for a moment.

“I don’t know what you saw, but it’s just medicine she puts on me! I’m sick, Matilda! I’m dying!” he added for good measure. “I’m sick like my father. I didn’t want to worry you, with the baby and all…”

Matilda’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s what that stink has been, it’s not for the horses, it’s for me! It’s on me! Smell!” He tried to thrust his chest beneath his wife’s nose, but she pushed him away in disgust.

“I never touched her, I swear, Matilda. I give you my word.” It was true enough, but suddenly the memory of seeing Githa in her bath came upon him and made him blush. Matilda did not miss it.

“Even if it’s true, there’s no earthly reason why that woman should have to put it on you. You have a wife, you have a valet—”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said miserably. This was not at all as easily explained as he had expected.

“How thoughtful!” she hissed.

“Don’t you believe me?” he asked plaintively.

She paused. She didn’t think him clever enough to come up with the ruse of a putrid ointment, or spartan enough to endure it, if that part of the story weren’t true. Alred took things too easily—far, far too easily. But the face she had seen through the window had not been the face of a man merely enduring a distasteful medical treatment. “Perhaps I do. But that changes nothing. There was nothing innocent about what I saw, whatever the pretext. You are either lying to me, or fooling yourself. Either way I am dishonored.”

“But Matilda—I’m dying! Don’t you believe me?”

“I will believe that when you are dead,” she said coldly.

Alred gasped.

“I’m going to sleep in Dunstan’s room tonight. I expect you to have a bedroom arranged for me tomorrow.” She turned to the door, and then paused, looking back at him. “And if I learn that you have been to see that woman without my knowledge… God help you both.”