Alred was sorry to have to put Margaret down. He felt less awkward holding her, but she was desperate to play with young Bedwig and squirmed like an anxious piglet in his arms.
Gunnilda was smiling and didn’t seem troubled by his arrival, but then she didn’t know what he had come to ask her.
“At least that boy is dressed today,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do with him. He’s getting to that age where it won’t do to have him run around naked – least of all before her ladyship.”
“Her ladyship has enough brothers that she isn’t likely to be surprised by anything that Beddy has to show her. Impressed, perhaps, but not surprised,” he grinned.
“Oh, pish!” Gunnilda laughed, and she blushed, both of which were pleasant to see. “Won’t Your Grace sit down and have a cup of cider?” she asked.
“That’s a fine idea. Still getting apples from the trees down on the old farm?”
“Osric lets us have the juice if we let him have the mash for the pigs.”
“What about your pigs?”
“Oh, they eat the nuts now, in the fall. I like it better.”
“We can’t tell the difference once Cook gets her hands on the pork,” he sighed. “In fact, I can never quite be sure it is pork at all.”
“But she makes good gravy,” Gunnilda giggled. “That’s what Bertie always says.”
“So do you, and you don’t have anything to hide.”
“Are you trying to get a dinner invitation out of me?”
“I should not presume…”
“Oh, pish. You know you can come anytime.”
“Perhaps later in the week. Today I’m dining with the King, whether he likes it or not, and that is why I am here. I need to ask your advice.”
“My advice? I hope you’re not asking my advice for something important with the King.”
“It involves neither foreign diplomacy nor the waging of war, though I doubt not that your advice would be invaluable in those areas as well. I am coming to you because you are a lady with a fine, deep heart, and I need to find out what such a creature would do in my situation.”
“What is your situation?”
“Forgive me, Gunnilda,” he said gently. “I ask you in advance to forgive me, for I know that this conversation will not be easy for you.”
She nodded, bewildered.
“My situation is this: I have a dear friend whose wife was perhaps a little mad at the end of her days, and finally took her own life, and my friend and his young child saw her thus.”
Gunnilda sat back in her chair, her eyes widening.
“Now, it has been a month or more, and my friend seems to be getting worse, not better, which makes me believe that I am doing something wrong.”
“You want to know what we did for Egelric,” she said softly.
“I wasn’t here at that time. And I never asked. I never dreamed…”
Gunnilda folded her hands in her lap and stared at the surface of the table. “We didn’t do anything,” she murmured. “We left him alone, because he would not see us. We only watched to see that the fire was lit every day, to know that he was still there. And then, one morning, he just… he just came. To me. With Baby. Baby was asking to see me,” she explained, looking up at him at last.
“And what did you do for him?”
She shook her head slowly, and then smiled, and then laughed a little sadly. “I told him he should keep his eyes open that day, because something good was bound to happen to him. And that was the day he met Your Grace and His Majesty on the road, coming home from Ely. That was something good, what! But just in case, I cooked something good for his supper, too,” she chuckled, and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, I haven’t thought of that day in so long! And that supper was so awful! Alwy told him – oh! what a fool I was! What a silly fool!” She stopped and hid her face in her trembling hand.
Alred sat and said nothing. He was sorry he had asked her. They hadn’t even mentioned Egelric’s name between them in many months, nor did he and Egelric speak of Gunnilda. Alred did not know what had gone wrong, but since nothing could possibly have gone right, “something bad” had perhaps been inevitable.
He was sorry he had asked her, for it seemed that the key in Egelric’s case had been Gunnilda herself. Sigefrith did not have a Gunnilda. Moreover, Sigefrith was a drinker, while Egelric had never been. If one of Sigefrith’s children asked him to take her to some hypothetical Gunnilda-like creature, it was not certain that Sigefrith would even hear.
Chapters
Egelric Gunnilda's could be young Eadgith, couldn't she ? ^^