Wynflaed is kissed

Wynflaed had left the door open to the cool air.

The shadows of the room had already been dancing wildly with the lamp’s flicker in the breeze, but at least those shadows danced in place. The moth’s shadow swooped and skimmed across the ceiling and the walls and her face, and she cringed away from it like one of the little field mice who squeaked and shuddered in terror as the shadow of the hawk passed over them. But she was too lonely to blow out the lamp, too tired to shoo the moth away.

She’d had worse pain before, and there had been times when she had managed to sleep through such pain as this. She was tired, it was true, but she was too lonely to sleep tonight.

She’d sat a long while with the open door, the lamp, and her loneliness, and it was no surprise that a fat, green-​white moth should have found its way inside to beat its silent wings over her lamp and cast its shadow over her head. Neither was it a surprise when the shadow of a tall, lean-​waisted man came to stand in the doorway.

“Wyn?” he whispered. “Are you ill?”

She blew out the lamp. She was not surprised, and yet it should have been a remarkable thing: she had sat up through the night many times since Sigefrith had come to tap on the window several weeks before, but she had never lit the lamp again before tonight. And yet the first time she had, he had come as surely as the moth.

His hands went up to show that he meant her no harm. She rose and went for her cloak.

“I saw the light,” he whispered.

She did not answer, but only stepped outside with him and closed the door behind them. He took her hand at once and laid it on his elbow, and then he began to walk with her down the hill towards the trees.

“I saw the light,” he repeated when they had gone some distance from the house.

“I know.”

“Are you ill?”

“A little.”

“Your little mother?”

“She’s no worse than when you saw her yesterday.”

He pressed the back of her hand against his side with his elbow. She who so often laid her hand on her own side was fascinated by the difference in his. It was straight and solid with muscle, and she did not think there was illness anywhere in his body. She who felt so weak and helpless thought he seemed unspeakably strong.

“What about you?” she asked him.

“Oh! I couldn’t sleep,” he said dismissively. “I went for a walk, as I often do. But I saw your light…”

“I know.”

That was all they needed to say to one another for a while. She saw him often, when he came during the afternoons to visit her family, and they could speak of common things then.

Yet even that was different now, though so much of what was not common had remained unspoken between them. He knew her secret, and she thought that made all the difference. When he was near, she no longer felt alone; and even when many people were there, she felt as if she were alone with him at the same time, in some secret place that no one else could see. She felt a relief from her worries in his presence that she had not felt since her father’s sheltering strength had been ripped away.

“Where are we going?” she asked as he led her into the trees at some distance from her house, where their own grove of birches merged into the greater forest.

“Oh, it’s a little place I like,” he said shyly. “I go there to think, and sometimes I think I should like to take you there. There’s a brook that runs through. It’s dry now, but there are still all of the ferns. I like ferns,” he said, and then he laughed awkwardly, at his own foolishness.

“I like ferns, too.”

“You do? Oh, that’s fine, then.” He relaxed again. “It isn’t much farther. It’s not too far for you, is it?” he asked, suddenly solicitous.

“No, no. It doesn’t hurt much tonight.”

He reached over with his other hand to caress her fingertips where they lay on his arm, and then he led her on.

His “little place” was nothing more than a fallen tree beside the steep, fern-​covered bank of a sometime stream. The branches hung low over it like a roof. It was a lonely, unlovely spot, unless one liked ferns.

She could never have imagined him here; when he was not with her, she always pictured him surrounded by men and horses and dogs, laughing or working or fighting, or perhaps, when he was at his most quiet and most gentle, with his children. He was not the sort of man one imagined sitting on a fallen tree with his chin in his hand, gazing thoughtfully into a clump of ferns.

And yet he led her eagerly to the log and sat her down on it as if he knew the spot well and had rehearsed the gesture a dozen times beforehand.

“It’s nicer in the spring and autumn, when there’s water in the brook,” he said apologetically once he had sat beside her. “I like to hear it.”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“I wish it would rain,” he added in a sigh, as everyone did those days, at the end of every conversation. The sound of the waters in the brook had long since been replaced by the clatter of the dry leaves that hung dead on the trees.

“How do you feel, Wynsome?” he asked suddenly, and he turned fully towards her and laid a hand on her left side. She could not feel the warmth of it through her cloak, but the gentle pressure was quite agreeable.

“It doesn’t hurt much tonight,” she said. “Mostly I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could I,” he said. He did not lift his hand. “I think you have been looking a little better lately. Haven’t you?”

“I think it is only because I told you.”

“You see?” he smiled. “Even great big loobies have ears.”

“And hands,” she blurted. She felt herself blush.

“Does it help?” he whispered. He rubbed his hand along her side to show what he meant.

“Yes, a little.”

He laid his other arm over her shoulder and pulled her against his chest, which seemed quite broad in comparison to her little head. His other hand he stroked up and down her side until she had relaxed against him.

His shirt smelled like the smoke of a smithy, horses, leather, and a man’s sweat. He smelled like the life she imagined for him, and yet it seemed he could live another. The proof was that he came sometimes to a lonely, unlovely spot to think. The proof was that he was there with her.

His hand came up to fumble at the hooks of her cloak—or so it seemed, for she quickly learned that he had deftly opened them, and he slipped his hand in to stroke her side through the linen of her nightgown.

Now she could feel the warmth of his hand. Indeed, she was quite hot inside her cloak, but she could not have gone out in aught but her nightgown. If she’d known he would come, she would have dressed… but if she had known he would come, she would not have gone downstairs at all.

They sat thus for a long enough while that Wynflaed was able to think of other things besides her alarm at the fact that a man was touching her through her nightgown.

“You still haven’t told me your own troubles,” she said.

“I told you, they aren’t important.”

“And I told you that they must be important to you. So they are important to me.”

“They are?” He sounded surprised, but his hand did not cease its slow stroking. “In that case I shall tell you. My trouble is simply that I am unhappy when I’m not with you.”

“Oh.”

“All day long I talk to you in my head. I think it would be more interesting if you were truly there to listen, and answer. Though I think you might laugh at me quite often, because I am rather stupid.” He laughed awkwardly.

“I wouldn’t laugh at you, Sigefrith. You’re not stupid. I don’t know why you always say you are. I don’t know who tells you you’re stupid. We certainly don’t think so.”

“You’re too kind,” he sighed. He laid his other hand on her head and pulled it back against his shoulder. “Let’s don’t talk for a while. I talk to you all day long. Now I should like to sit with you and be still.”

And so they sat still. Only his hand moved. After a time it came up and seemed to fumble at the laces of her nightgown, but again it was deft enough that she felt them loosen before she knew what to do, and his other hand still held her head against his body.

He opened her gown wide enough for his arm, and again his hand found her side. She shivered, but his other arm held her still. Her skin was too damp to allow him to slide his hand across it, and so he only stroked her with his fingertips.

She forgot her pain in her sudden awareness that her breast was lying heavily on the back of his wrist. She wondered whether he had noticed, but she shortly learned he had, for his hand came up until he held her breast in his palm, and he began stroking her skin again with his thumb. It seemed that he too had forgotten her pain.

Her heart was pounding, and she was beginning to pant in a sort of panic. She did not think it was supposed to happen this way. First the man would hold her hand, and then kiss her chastely, and then, another day, perhaps kiss her less chastely, and then… She did not know exactly what should have preceded the moment when a man first laid his hand on her breast, but she was certain he should kiss her first. At least once. Even chastely.

“Sigefrith?” she whimpered. She did not recognize her own voice.

“Wynsome?” She did not recognize his either.

“You never even kissed me!”

The hand in her gown did not move, but he laid the other arm around her shoulders and leaned her far enough away from him that he could bend his head to kiss her.