Synne comes to help

“Estrid!” Aengus gasped.

Murchad was startled out of his daydream. “What?”

“It’s Estrid I’m hearing.”

Murchad looked up at the window, but it was a moment before the flash of a torch passed before it to show that someone was at the gate.

“It’s good ears you have,” Murchad said.

“I shall wish them on the devil when the crying comes on her,” Aengus muttered.

“Ach! Aengus! You’ve heard it before,” Murchad said.

He did not think the words terribly reassuring, but it was the best he could do. Sigefrith had promised to come as soon as Drage went to sleep, and Murchad hoped he would not tarry. It was rather selfish of him, considering that the little Prince was ill, but he could not see how he could pass this night alone with Aengus. Edris had tried to reassure him that third babies often came quickly, but it had turned out that “quickly” meant, “Oh! Only half the night.”

“That’s why!” Aengus wailed. “It’s stone-​deaf you’ll wish yourself before the night is over.”

“Aengus…”

Murchad abandoned any attempt of consoling Aengus when he heard a familiar laugh ringing outside, no farther away than on the bridge, he thought, and before he could think any further the door was opened unto her.

Synne! Here! Tonight, of all nights!

Aengus rose, reminding Murchad that he should stand and go to the ladies as well. Aengus was kissed and caressed by the both of them, and Murchad had kissed Estrid’s hand before he knew what he was about, but he still had no idea how he would ever look Synne in the eyes. Tonight, of all nights!

But Synne solved the problem for him by turning her back to him and shrugging her shoulders in the gesture that showed she was ready for him to help her remove her cloak.

He had come to love this moment in their meetings, for he loved to look at her as she stood with her neck bowed and her head turned slightly towards him. From behind her shoulder he could only see the curve of her cheek, the dark lashes of one eye, and perhaps the tip of her tiny nose. Nor did he think that she could see him, so he never failed to study her face as long as he could before he pulled her cloak down her arms. He did not often dare to look at her when she could catch him doing it.

The removal of her cloak was one gesture they two had learned to do together without fumbling, but there were few enough of those even now. And with her brother home, they had fewer opportunities than ever to practice being together. Brede’s sullen surveillance was oppressive enough that Murchad had found himself growing awkward again where he had begun to feel at ease.

There was no Brede here tonight… but tonight, of all nights!

Estrid smirked briefly at Synne and then put her hand in Aengus’s arm. “I shall tell Maire and Edris we’re here,” Estrid said to Synne, “but first I shall take this pale man in and sit him down before he pass out on the floor like a woman.”

Aengus laughed uneasily and let her lead him away, leaving Murchad and Synne alone in the screened passage. Murchad had her cloak off and had handed it to the maid, and only now did she turn and look him in the eyes. She too was pale, but she smiled.

“Are you watching with Aengus tonight?” she asked. “That’s so kind.”

“I am—but I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Well—not to watch with Aengus!” she laughed. “Though I think I would prefer. I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” she said with an anxious little laugh. “One would think it were I that was to have a baby tonight.”

Nothing she could have said would have made him turn redder than he was now.

“Have you ever—” he gasped.

“No! I’ve never been. But Estrid said I should, and Maire wanted me. Brede thinks I ought to be married first, but that’s Brede. He thinks I still think that the babies are brought by a stork,” she said confidingly. “That’s what they tell the little children in Denmark. But Sigi didn’t sail all the way to Nidaros to meet the stork, did she?” She giggled again, but her eyes were wide and her hands trembled. She was being bold, but it was to hide her fear.

“The Scots say the faeries bring them,” he murmured, and then he winced at his own idiocy.

But he wondered now what she did believe. It would not have surprised him any more than Brede to learn she still believed in the stork. The girls he had been with had known far more about such things than he—but those weren’t the girls one married. Could it be that Synne too knew more than he?

“Oh, I like that better than the squawking storks,” she said. “And I would feel sure the faeries know what they’re doing. I always wondered how the stupid stork managed to bring the right baby to the right house.”

She tried to laugh, and he tried to laugh with her.

“Have you ever watched through the night?” she whispered suddenly.

“What? No! Never.”

“Oh. I wonder how long it will take.”

“Edris said half the night.”

She opened her mouth into a little “O” but no sound was forthcoming. He could not think of a single thing to say to comfort her that was not obviously idiotic.

“I don’t know why,” she whispered, “but I’m scared. I shouldn’t say so, because she’s your sister, but I… if something happens…”

“Ach!” He rubbed her arm rather awkwardly. “Nothing will happen, I’m certain.”

“And you! You will have Aengus to think about.”

“Sigefrith said he would come when the baby went to sleep.”

“Oh!” she said in relief. “Thank God for Sigefrith. I shall feel better simply knowing he is here.”

“Thank God!” he agreed.

“I wish I didn’t have to come,” she admitted in a small voice. Her head was very near his by now. “But Maire said I mustn’t wait to learn. We don’t know what will happen when I’m married, do we? Who knows how many ladies we will have with us in Ireland? Perhaps they will all be old maids, and won’t know any more about it than I! Or perhaps they will all have fled, and there will only be we two!”

“I hope not!” he said. “I don’t want you to be lonely.”

“But you would be there! I wouldn’t be lonely. At least not for a long while,” she smiled. “And then we shall start having children, and we shall wish we could be lonely together again once in a while. And think! How we shall look back on this night and laugh at what frightened babies we both were ourselves!”

She was a remarkable creature, he thought. She was more remarkable than a woman who was simply unafraid. She was a young woman who had fears, and who brought them to him—not in the expectation that he would immediately dispel them, but knowing that their fears would be easier to face if they faced them together.

“Are you done with your whispering?” Estrid called from the doorway, startling the two of them. “Maire wants to see you, Synn. Let her go, Murchad. You can make your own babies someday when Synne don’t have better things to do, like tonight.”

Synne laughed and left him, but she rubbed his arm quickly as she went past, as he had done hers a few moments before. She was remarkable. He would feel more at ease this night only knowing that she was there behind the door.