Matilda drifts off

Matilda had seen the green glow of Alred’s favorite lamp and had heard Dunstan’s soft laughter. At this hour! She had kissed him in his bed hours before.

But she heard too late the deep voice of Leofric muttering a reply to her son – she had already thrown open the door.

Both faces turned up to her – the old and dark, the young and fair – and each wore the same guilty expression.

“I – I beg your pardon,” Matilda stuttered.

Dunstan sat in his father’s chair and Leofric opposite him, and there was a checkered game board on the table between them.

“Mother,” Dunstan said softly, paler than the little ivory men.

“We couldn’t sleep,” Leofric said sheepishly.

“And coincidentally found each other here?” she asked, speaking with annoyance to hide her discomposure.

“If I can’t sleep I come here to read,” Dunstan said.

“And if I can’t, then we play chess,” Leofric finished. “Although I suspect this runt has been having trouble sleeping lately due to thinking about chess.” They exchanged a conspiratorial smile.

“You can’t play during the day?” she asked.

“Leofric is so busy, Mother,” Dunstan said.

“There are worse things a young runt could be doing after midnight than playing chess with an old grandfather such as I,” Leofric grinned. “And tell her about your recent discovery.”

“What?”

“What you blurted last night when I saw your trap and lured you into mine.”

“Oh!” Dunstan cried. “He’s clever, Mother!” he proclaimed as if he had indeed made an important discovery.

Leofric laughed, and Matilda could not help laughing with him.

“Twenty years you’ve known me, and you’ve never come to that conclusion, I would wager!”

“It’s because you’ve never played chess with him,” Dunstan said. “But you should! Then you will see. And, Mother, it’s a game for you! The Queen is the strongest piece on the board, and the King spends all his time hiding behind his knights and running away!”

“Was that a joke?” Leofric gasped.

Dunstan flushed and shrank down into his chair again, but he smiled up at Leofric. “I don’t know – was it funny?”

“It made your mother laugh,” Leofric said, for it had.

Then Dunstan smiled up at her, his eyes twinkling. She scarcely recognized him.

“Can three play this game?” she asked.

“No, but we can teach you!” Dunstan said eagerly. “Let me get you a chair – ”

He ran out into the hall, leaving her alone with Leofric for a moment. Leofric busied himself rearranging the little men on the board, and she hesitated, searching for something to say.

She had managed all of her husband’s affairs alone so far, and Leofric often dined with his daughter or with Edris and Maire, so she had hardly had need even to see him. She could plan her movements to avoid crossing his path, and he certainly had not sought her out.

Finding him here in this intimacy with her shy son had been a shock to her. Scarcely having seen him, she had not realized that the cold and forbidding demeanor he had worn of late was for her alone. With others it seemed he was still his warm and rough and hearty self.

He had not forgiven her.

Dunstan returned before she could speak.

“Will you play with me or with Leofric, Mother?” Dunstan asked her. “Oh – you had better sit with Leofric and let him help you. I’m certain you want to win.” He dropped the chair at Leofric’s side before she could argue.

“I’m certain you want to win,” Leofric said to Dunstan, “and so you’re passing the beginner off to me.”

“You can whisper to her what she should do,” he suggested.

Matilda hesitated beside the chair.

“Better yet,” Leofric said, “I shall speak aloud. Perhaps then you might benefit from my advice, since you regularly seem to forget everything I have told you, short of the rules of the game. And even those sometimes!”

Dunstan held the chair out for her with an expectant look on his face. He was obviously eager to play, and quite unaware of what he was asking her to do. She sat.

It was Dunstan who explained to her how the pieces were moved, and she could not remember the last time he had been so excited or so talkative.

She hardly heard and hardly understood, but Leofric would tell her which piece to move, and she would move it. He played through her hands. At first he also explained his strategy to her, but after a time the two seemed to forget her and played together again, and then Leofric began moving his own men, and Matilda was left to watch. But this was all that interested her.

She scarcely knew her son. Even so late, long after he should have been in bed, he was more animated than he ever was in the day. He did not blush or stammer, and when he spoke his voice did not seem to be begging one’s pardon for every word. He laughed freely and looked Leofric in the eyes. Strangest of all, this boy who shrank from any kind of physical play was suddenly giggling with delight every time Leofric reached across the board to cuff his ear for his impudence, or even, when Dunstan made a foolish mistake, to clap his big hand over the top of the boy’s head and try to shake some sense into it.

She was beginning to wish he would do the same to her. She felt as if she were adrift. She did not know her son, she did not know Leofric, and she felt that she was watching them from somewhere outside of the room, shut out.

The only thing that seemed real was Leofric’s arm beside her. His sleeve was loose and soft, but she could sense his arm inside of it as if it were bare.

In her fatigue, she knew it as well as she had known her father’s arm when, years before, she had sat at his side at the Earl’s great table, long after she should have been in bed. Her father would let her sit up with the men as long as she could keep her eyes open, and many nights she had leaned for hours against his arm so that she might concentrate the last of her energy on her eyelids. For hours he would sit still so that she would not be jostled, and then, suddenly it always seemed, the arm would be around her shoulders, and his other would slip under her knees, and he would carry her up to her bed.

She thought she would willingly die tonight if only her father could carry her up to her bed one last time. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps when her time came, tonight or some other night, her father would come for her, and he would carry her up to paradise. For eighteen years he had been waiting there for her. For eighteen years she had been trudging on alone without him. Now she was tired. Now all she wanted was to fall sleep against his arm.

She was aware, suddenly it seemed, of a silence. Her father was sitting still so that she would not be jostled. His sleeve was soft and his arm warm. It was just as it had been in life. She felt his breath on her forehead. He was looking down at her. Her father…

“Mother?”

“Shhh,” Leofric hushed, but too late.

Matilda sat up, flushed, embarrassed, confused.

“I beg your pardon,” she mumbled when she had realized whose arm it had been.

“I consider it an honor,” Leofric said, smiling gently.

Furious at herself, she pushed back her chair and stood. “I think it is time for you to go to bed,” she snapped at her son.

“Mayn’t we finish this game?” Dunstan asked feebly. “I’ve nearly lost.”

“Perhaps you should take your mother up to bed, runt,” Leofric said.

“No!” she said. “No. I shall go alone. Goodnight, gentlemen.”

They stood, and Dunstan scrambled to open the door for her.

“Finish your game,” she muttered in reply to his goodnight, scarcely daring to look at him. 

She did not look at Leofric at all.

She was so tired. She was tired with thirty-​​seven years of living, but she knew she would not die tonight. She trudged up to her bed, alone, without him.