Alred brings a harp

“What is this?” Egelric asked.

“It’s a harp!” Lady Lili cried and clapped her hands in delight.

“I can see that, Lili. Indeed, I should say it’s your harp,” he said to Alred, who stood rather sheepishly by.

“Isn’t it lovely?” she gushed.

“Lovely,” Egelric bowed to her and then turned back to his lord. “I was not aware that harps went visiting about with their harpists?”

“They do not, to my knowledge,” Alred agreed. “This one came to stay.”

“I see.”

“Isn’t it sweet of him?” Lili asked, but her question seemed to be more than a mere attempt to get him to agree with her opinion. A little frown of concern had appeared in response to what must have seemed to her to be a look of grim displeasure on his own face.

“Aye.”

“Come now, old man,” Alred laughed. “I’m well known for giving inappropriate gifts to other men’s wives. If it helps, I can say I brought it for Lady Lili and Lady Hedwige both.”

“Why should it help?” Egelric smiled wolfishly. “That makes two men’s wives.”

“Doesn’t that halve the impropriety?”

“I should say it rather doubles it!” But he laughed.

“There, Lili,” Alred said. “I told you he wouldn’t mind. And he will be entirely won over once he comes in from a long day of riding over the muddy fields and finds you playing as prettily as you do. And as pretty as you are. He will wish he had thought of it himself.”

“I already do, Lili. You should have told me, if you wanted a harp.”

“But I didn’t!” she protested. “I didn’t think of it at all.”

“Anyway, old man,” Alred said, “where would you have found yourself one? And if you know, please tell me, for I am now in want of one myself.”

“But I can’t take yours, if it is so!” Lili protested.

“Certainly you can. It will give me a greater pleasure to know you are playing it than to play it myself. And I need only visit my friend Sir Sigefrith if I wish to play.”

“Or visit us, of course!”

Alred bowed. “Do not make the suggestion too often, or I shall make a pest of myself. And not only for the harp.”

Lili laughed and went to sit at her harp, which stood now in the windowed alcove where a torch had lately been.

“You don’t mind that we put it here?” she asked her husband.

“It is your own hall, Lili,” Egelric sighed. “I only ask that you leave my desk where it stands.”

But once she had begun to play, he admitted to himself that he did not mind at all. He had indeed been out riding in the mud all morning, and it was not unpleasant to come in to a warm, bright hall, and sit with his dearest friend, and listen to a pretty song played by a lovely young woman. If only it could seem real to him!

It was not long before the door to the stairs opened and Lady Hedwige came in.

“I thought I am hearing music,” she smiled.

Alred was at her side at once, and led her gently to sit on the couch beside him.

“Do you see what Alred brought us?” Lili cried without lifting her fingers from the strings.

“To us?” Hetty smiled. “But I cannot play with my…” She looked down at her broad belly and blushed in embarrassment. It was true that it would be difficult for her to sit behind the instrument in her condition.

“Soon you shall,” Alred promised her. “And music was always the thing to put my little girls to sleep, though the old man would have none of it and wanted to be carried all the time.”

He sighed and smiled sadly, and that was the last thing anyone said for a long while. Lady Hedwige was always a quiet, thoughtful young woman, but now she seemed entirely absent. Alred sat with his sad half-​​smile and stared at Lili as if he did not see her at all. Even Lili seemed more pensive than merry as she played.

Egelric knew only his own thoughts, of course, and they were as confused as they always were these days. He had not forgotten what his cousin had said about “living another man’s life.” He had grudgingly allowed his King to knight him and his lord to install him in a castle of his own – he, who was born in a daub house with a single room!

It had seemed strange enough then, but now the transformation was complete. He had a title that did not seem real, a home that did not seem real, a wife that did not seem real, a life that did not seem real – and yet he was almost certain that it was not a dream.

Even if it were, he knew now that he would never wake.