Bertie is shaken awake

“Bertie, oh, Bertie.”

Someone was shaking him awake. He did not have windows in his little room, but he knew it could not yet be dawn. He felt as if he had only just gone to bed. In fact, he was rather certain he had only just gone to bed, for his cheek was still warm from the heat radiating from the chimney near the bed. His lord’s bedroom fire had not yet burned low.

Bertie grunted and tried to pull the blankets up over his face. He was a page, not some menial servant to be awoken at any hour of the night.

“Bertie.”

But that was not the croak of the old steward, nor the grumble of Cook, nor the finely timbred voice of the valet Osric. It was the sort of soft, caressing voice one would use to talk to lambs.

“Da!” he cried.

“That’s right, Bertie,” his Da said.

The room was dark, and he could not see his father’s face. He could only see the Duke silhouetted in the doorway, with the torch in the corridor lit behind him.

For a moment, he was simply happy to see his father. For a moment, in his sleepiness, he forgot that a big boy of nine should not kiss and cling to his father. It was such a rare thing, to see his father in the night. But then – what did that mean?

“Bertie,” his father said softly, caressingly, “I guess maybe you should get up and get dressed. I guess you should come with me if you want to say goodbye to your brother.”

“Wick?” Bertie whimpered, forgetting he was a big boy of nine.

“That’s right, Bertie. I guess he’s real bad tonight, and Father Brandt is there. And maybe he won’t even know you’re there. But your Ma is just crying for you, so I guess you should come home for her.”

“Mama?”

The Duke stood in the doorway like a shadow that had taken body and stepped away from the wall. In the day, in the light, Bertie would have known him for the little, laughing, living man that he loved. But in the dark, with the light at his back, he was like a colossus. He was not a man: he was a lord. And a lord should be able to do something.

“My lord?”

“Go to your Mama, Bertie,” his lord said. “Kiss her for me.”

His lord could not do anything. He was not master over this. There was only compassion in his voice – and fear too, Bertie thought, for his own daughters were very ill, and the children of other people whom he loved.

Bertie reached up his arms and wrapped them around his father’s neck. His father stood to his great height, and Bertie was pulled up from his bed, and he allowed himself to dangle there for a moment, with his feet far above the floor.