“Again!” Mouse laughed in exasperation as another knock came at the door. “You can’t see her, Sigefrith! If it’s you!”
“It isn’t Sigefrith!” a deep, growly voice called. “Sigefrith is downstairs sweating into a bucket, or something undignified.”
“It’s me!” a tiny voice piped after him.
“It is I,” the first corrected.
“It’s me and my Papa!” the other said.
The Queen laughed and went to open the door. “It’s my father and little Leia.”
“Well now,” Leofric said. “I was just told that it’s good luck for a bride to see a dove on her wedding day, and as it happens I brought one with me, so I thought I should bring her up.”
“Wynflaed would have seen Leia when she went downstairs,” the Queen scolded. “You were only looking for an excuse to come up yourself.”
“I simply wanted to make sure you got the right one dressed up, and it seems you have. How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked Wynflaed.
His voice was gruffly gentle, but that did not change the fact that Wynflaed still found him as awe-inspiring as the colossus he seemed to her. Her father had been a tall man, but Lord Hingwar was broad-shouldered and massive as well, and today he was dressed as a knight girt for battle or ceremony, which made him seem all the more terrifying.
“I don’t know,” Mouse said, as if speaking to monumental men were something she did every day. “I think she’s looking a little pale.”
“I shall pinch her cheeks for her and take care of that.” Fortunately he only winked at Wynflaed and did not make a move towards her, or she felt she would have ducked under the bed in panic.
“What nonsense!” the Queen said. “Isn’t she the prettiest bride you’ve ever seen?”
“Just about,” Leofric said thoughtfully. “But not quite.” This time his wink was for his daughter. “But I think I know what’s got her so pale,” he said confidentially to Leia. “She’s looking at me and thinking, Heavens! is that what my husband will look like in twenty years?”
“Oh, no!” Wynflaed gasped.
“Never you mind, my dear,” he said to her, obviously delighted by her discomposure. “Sigefrith has some of his mother in him, and she doesn’t look a day over thirty. He ought to come out looking thirty-six or so when he gets to my age, and I was quite a dashing man even that late in my life, wasn’t I, my baby?”
“You still are,” the Queen smiled.
“Ah, but I forget that you are partial to older men, given that your husband is over forty as well.”
“As you are constantly reminding him!” she laughed. “A few weeks over forty.”
“A few weeks, a few years…” Leofric sighed. “Ah, well, we cannot be and yet have been, as I once said to—an old friend. Now I had better get me downstairs so that poor Wynflaed can finally exhale. I shan’t leave you this little dove, as she seems to be turning into a raven with a marked fascination for the bright, shiny things you have in your hair.”
He surely meant it kindly, but Wynflaed flushed in mortification. Sigefrith had given her a very pretty pair of earrings as a wedding gift, never remembering that she had no holes to put them in, but the Queen had saved the day by pinning them to the flowers she wore in her hair and promising that her ears would be pierced at her convenience.
Wynflaed, however, felt that she had no right to wear anything so fine. Truly, she was feeling that she had no right to be there at all.
“Don’t mind my father,” the Queen said after he had gone. “He likes to tease, but he’s truly a dear, and he loves you already. I can tell. He only likes to growl like a bear because it prevents people from guessing what a big, foolish looby he is.”
“He’s a looby too?” Mouse giggled.
“All our family are loobies,” the Queen said. “All of the men, anyway. So will your sons be, Wynflaed, but I suppose you are as partial to loobies as I am to handsome old dragons.”
Wynflaed said, “Yes,” and tried to smile.
“Oh, how I wish our father could be here!” Mouse sighed. “Wouldn’t he have been proud? And our little mother?”
Wynflaed choked. “I don’t know…”
“What nonsense!” Mouse cried. “Our little mother adored Sigefrith. And I’m certain our father would have too.”
Wynflaed thought he might have. But she did not think he would have been proud today. Her little mother even less so. Why didn’t Mouse understand?
“I’m certain they would have been very proud and very happy for you, Wynflaed,” the Queen said. “Just as my parents are proud and happy today.”
Wynflaed nodded her thanks, but she did not believe the Queen understood either.
“Mouse, would you kindly go down and ask my mother how much longer it will be, and whether I am needed for anything? I should like to have a word with your sister in the meanwhile.”
Mouse remembered to curtsey and left at once. Wynflaed immediately grew anxious. She was in awe of the Queen as well, and deeply aware of the presumption in a farmer’s daughter such as she marrying the brother of a Queen. Surely the Queen herself, who lived in a world of etiquette and propriety and of precisely delineated shades of rank, would have been even more aware.
“Wynflaed,” the Queen began, “I hope you will pardon me for my presumption, but I wish to speak to you as if I were already your sister, and tell you something I wish someone had been able to tell me before I was married.”
Wynflaed blushed at the mere mention of the word “presumption” on the part of the Queen, but she was too stunned by the word “sister” to protest.
“I don’t know that you have been having the same thoughts I did, and I shan’t ask you to confess, but I should like to tell you anyway. It might comfort you, and, if nothing else, it will help you know me better, and I hope we shall soon get to know one another very well.”
Wynflaed nodded.
“This is something I have never told anyone—not even my husband—so you must forgive me if I seem awkward about it.” She smiled weakly. “I was a young girl when I first knew my husband. Younger than you. And I was a young girl when I first began to care for him. To love him, I suppose I can say now. But his first wife was still alive at the time.”
The Queen stopped and sighed and twisted her fingers in agitation. Wynflaed thought she ought to speak, but could not find a thing to say. However, the Queen had not finished.
“I don’t know what Sigefrith has told you about his life with Hilda. He is a gentleman, and so I think he will have told you very little. Perhaps he will not appreciate my telling you, so I hope you will not mention it to him, but he had not been happy with Hilda for some time. I don’t wish to speak ill of her now, but I think you know what kind of man my brother is, and I think you can imagine who was the most to blame for his unhappiness. Likewise, although I hope you will not speak of this either, our old Queen was not well in her mind at the end of her life, and she too was no longer truly a wife to her husband. And I believe now that my husband was already beginning to grow fond of me at that time.”
Again she stopped, and Wynflaed nodded slowly, again wondering whether that was all. It was not.
“When I learned the Queen had died, I was very troubled. I was afraid to think that somehow I had hoped for her death, and that somehow my hopes had turned into prayers, and the prayers had had an effect. I know it’s silly, but I thought it. And I was ashamed of myself, because no matter how much I tried to deny it, there was always a part of me that rejoiced in her death, because it made me hopeful for my own happiness. I am still ashamed of it, but I have forgiven myself. If you have ever had such thoughts, I hope you will forgive yourself, too. And I want you to know that, if you have, I understand, and you may talk to me if you want to talk to someone.”
Wynflaed nodded earnestly. She could not speak, but she had had these thoughts, and she could not forgive herself.
“And as for your baby,” the Queen said a little sadly, “I’ve been married nearly four years and the Lord has given me only one child. So I can only rejoice for you and my brother. After four years, a few months more or less don’t matter so much to me. The important thing is that you will be married today, and I am certain the Lord had all of this in His plan, so who are we to question it? As for the rest of my family, I don’t know their opinion of the matter, but you can be certain of one thing: we are only loobies and the women who love them, but we are not people who would accept you into our family only to snub you to show you how superior we are. Rather, anyone who speaks ill of you will have to face the wrath of all of us. And I don’t think you can even imagine my father’s wrath,” she said with a rueful smile. “And he in particular is quite fond of you already.”
Wynflaed smiled hesitantly in return.
“Wait until you see him with your son or daughter. He loves nothing so much as grandchildren. But you had better name him before my father gets his hands on him. He names any unnamed baby he touches, and we already have two birds, a dragon, a bumble-bee, dawn and evening, a secret, and a mystery in our family thanks to him.”
Wynflaed giggled.
“It’s simply a warning,” the Queen confided. “Perhaps you would like to have a child named Duck or Chicken.”
“I already have a sister named Mouse.”
“That’s true,” the young Queen laughed. “Then you and he may have fun together choosing a name. Anyway, if it’s a boy, it doesn’t matter, for he and your husband and mine will call him ‘runt’ no matter what you choose!”
Chapters
Yes! The wedding day!
That was th sweetest conversation ever!