Sigefrith and Leofric meet a dragon

“It’s been terribly quiet up there for a while,” Leofric said.

Sigefrith lifted his head and blinked at him, as if he had been nodding off in his chair. Sleeping!

“What?” Sigefrith asked.

“I said, it’s been quiet up there for a while.”

“Had you been hearing anything?”

“Not hearing, but I mean that no one has been going in and out for a while now.”

“Well?” Sigefrith shrugged. “Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know. I wish someone would come out, so we could ask.”

Sigefrith let his head fall back against the wall with an audible thump. “I wish someone would come out, by God,” he muttered.

Leofric could not but sit on the edge of his chair. Nevertheless he felt the faint nausea resulting from a sleepless night, and his eyes burned, and his skin prickled strangely.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he said after a while.

Sigefrith lifted his head and cried, “You are? What did you expect, grandfather? And you’re only six years older than I! How shall I feel when I am a grandfather?”

“I don’t know, runt,” Leofric said with a slow grin. “But I hope I shall live to see it! The fun I shall have mocking you as you mocked me! Caedwulf is almost eleven, you know. Sigefrith wasn’t sixteen when Haakon was born.”

“I pray that Sigefrith will not be setting the example for the boy!”

“Would be funny if he did,” Leofric cackled.

“Oh, shut the hell up and leave me in peace. I mean distress.”

Leofric rested his chin in his hands and did.

He was fond, he thought, of little Leila, and he liked Hilda well enough, and he had even felt a certain affection for Eadgith early in their marriage and when his children were born. Nevertheless he had not yet experienced anything to prepare him for what he was now enduring. At least he hoped not.

Matilda had died far away and been dead half a day before he learned of it. Leia had come early, and so he had not been expecting that shock on that day. Nothing he had experienced before had matched the brutality of that letter, nor the anguish that followed. She had been dead for twelve hours before he learned of it.

For twelve hours on that otherwise uneventful day, he had lived in the relative peace of his uneventful life, reposing in the knowledge that there was Matilda in the world.

It meant that for twelve hours, he had been reposing on nothing, and the thought still made him dizzy. Living those twelve hours had taught him nothing. Looking back on those twelve hours had taught him what a hollow mockery of itself was life.

Now the door to the stairs that led up to his daughter’s bedchamber had stayed closed for – how long? An hour? Two? Had he lived two hours believing his daughter in the world, while yet–

“Sigefrith?” he whimpered.

“What?” Sigefrith sighed.

“Mightn’t we send someone?”

“Whom?”

“I don’t know. Wake one of the maids.”

“We shall wait for her mother or one of the ladies.”

“But, Sigefrith – ”

“Wait.”

“But I can’t bear it.”

Sigefrith lifted his head and opened his mouth to growl at him just as the door opened. Leofric was on his feet at once.

It was Lady Eadgith, carrying a small bundle, and wearing a smile so radiant that Leofric was suddenly reminded why he had once felt an affection for her.

He was at her side before Sigefrith had quite left his chair.

“Get back, you,” she said and nudged him playfully with her free hand.

It was true that their daughter had her very eyes. It was enough to make her seem unbearably beautiful.

“His Papa shall hold him first,” she said smugly.

“Him!” Leofric crowed. “It’s a boy! I knew it would be! I knew it!”

“You knew nothing at all, you old fool,” Eadgith laughed with a slow, deep, delightful laugh.

“Disappointed, grandfather?” Sigefrith asked him.

“Never! My baby wanted a son, and so, by God, she had a son! How is she?” he asked Eadgith, stricken again by his fear, though it had been eased at the sight of her smile.

“She’s very well, no thanks to you and you,” she said to Sigefrith and the little son he was by now holding in his big, square hands.

“Let me see him!” Leofric begged. He took a tiny, square hand between his fingers, though the baby ignored him completely in favor of gazing into his father’s eyes. “Whom does he resemble?” Leofric asked his wife.

“Not you!” she said with satisfaction.

“Praise God!” Leofric said.

“I don’t know who in our family has such a pointed head if it isn’t Leofric,” Sigefrith said.

“Oh!” Eadgith scoffed. “You know it will be perfectly round in no time.”

“Not perfectly, I hope,” Sigefrith laughed. “Let him keep his wee nose, at least. Doesn’t he look like a little piggy with it?”

“You insult my grandson,” Leofric said, scandalized.

“By God,” Sigefrith laughed, “what would my poor mother have thought if she had been told that one day her grandson would be your grandson?”

“She would have gelded me on the spot,” Leofric said.

“What nonsense,” Eadgith said. “She always loved you like her own son.”

Leofric smiled at her, surprised by this great generosity. Eadgith knew of his affection for the late Lady Hwala, but he had always thought that, if anything, she had been jealous of it.

“Your son tells me you have already named my next seventeen children,” Sigefrith said to him. “Care to tell me the name of the first?”

Leofric looked down at the baby, nearly blushing with an unaccustomed bashfulness. It was one thing to name children not yet dreamt of, but to be confronted with this son of his beloved daughter and of his beloved son-​​in-​​law…

“You might ask Eadie,” Eadgith huffed.

Sigefrith said, “I believe Eadie’s intention was to allow her father to name him, and if he would not, he would be named Leofric himself.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t do at all,” Eadgith laughed. “You had better think of something clever, Leof, or I shall name him myself. I will not have your name in my mouth a hundred times a day.”

“Well?” Sigefrith asked. “I expect you to come up with something better than Dora and Blithe. I won’t have Eadie jealous of her brother’s luck with the baby names.”

“It will be difficult to better Blithe,” Eadgith said.

“It would have been if Blithe had in fact fit her,” Sigefrith corrected.

“Sigefrith! She can’t help it if she has the colic! Poor dear!”

“Well, what is it, Leof?” Sigefrith asked him. “Don’t tell me you had been expecting every one of our first seventeen babies to be a girl.”

“I had been thinking,” Leofric murmured, “that if it was a boy, you could name him Drage.”

It had felt oddly presumptuous to say it, but Sigefrith laughed appreciatively.

“Danish for ‘dragon’! By God, I like it.”

“Oh, Leof!” Eadgith cried. “How dreadful! Why not call him Satan and be done with it?”

“I protest!” Sigefrith said. “I am living proof that evil dragons are not the only kind, and if I am not mistaken, Eadie will be only too delighted.”

“Do you suppose so?” Leofric smiled.

“We shall go ask her, Prince Drage and I. If I know my dragons, he’s dangerously hungry at the moment. Does she know what to do?” he asked Eadgith.

“I shall go with you and help her,” Eadgith said, and she opened the door again.

“But what about me?” Leofric wailed. “I haven’t even held him yet!”

“Can you feed him?” Sigefrith asked.

“No…”

“Then you shall wait, and you shall see him and his Mama both together later.”

“But – ”

“You may kiss him,” Eadgith said as if she bestowed a grand favor. “Sigefrith, let the old fool kiss him.”

“I’m not a fool because I love my grandchildren,” Leofric muttered.

“No, but you are old!” Sigefrith cried. “Damned if it doesn’t do me good to say it about someone else for once.”

Leofric kissed the baby’s red cheek and begged Sigefrith, “Don’t forget to tell her her father is here and would like to see her when she is ready.”

“She knows you’re here, for heaven’s sake!” Eadgith said. “She was terrified she would have this baby before you arrived.”

“She kept me waiting a long time afterwards,” Leofric said.

“She didn’t. This little man did.”

“Little dragon,” Sigefrith corrected.

“Oh! I suppose we’re stuck with the name now,” Eadgith sighed in exasperation.

“It’s better than Leofric,” Leofric said.

“I think Satan would have been,” she laughed. “Now go down to the kitchen and get something to eat. You look exhausted.”

Leofric was touched by this unaccountable interest in his well-​​being. She did not seem sarcastic.

“He was telling me that he only looks that way because he’s old,” Sigefrith said as he and Eadgith started up the stairs.

“And a fool!” she laughed, but her laugh was not cruel.