Egelric had, apparently, heard him calling out greetings to the guard and the steward, for he was already on his feet and crossing the hall to meet him when Alred came in.
“Good morning!” Egelric smiled and bowed. He looked happy. Alred wondered whether his happiness would long endure.
“Good morning! No Lili today? Did she hear me coming?” Alred pretended to look under the couch.
“She’s resting. I think even she can be slowed down by a baby.”
“Finding oneself heavy with your child would, at least, give one pause, I should think.”
“Alas, you will never know.”
Alred knew it was cruel of him, but he longed to wipe that smile from his friend’s face. He dropped himself onto the couch and asked, “Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Ah! This is one wedding of which I’ve learned before you! That’s some consolation.”
“Who’s getting married now? And please don’t tell me it’s my daughter.”
“Malcolm only wishes she had that in mind. I’m talking about Gunnilda.”
Egelric’s only response was to lift his head slightly, in surprise perhaps.
“Well? Don’t you care to know to whom?”
“I suppose it must be to Ethelmund.”
“Oh? Why do you suppose?”
“Because you have not missed an occasion to mention to me that you had seen Ethelmund at her house,” Egelric replied calmly.
“Have I?” Alred slumped back against the cushions, somewhat subdued. The happiness he most endangered was usually his own. “Jupiter!” he said softly. “I am become a rather bitter man, it would seem.”
“I have begun to think so.”
“Well?” Alred cried, infuriated by Egelric’s calm. “What will you do now?”
“Congratulate her, I suppose.”
“Oh, no! Don’t you dare! You’ll break her heart.”
“I should think it would be a greater insult to ignore the occasion,” Egelric said gravely.
Alred stood up again. He could not bear to sit. He longed to stamp his foot in impatience as Iylaine did; he thought it might be some comfort after all.
“Damn you!” he cried. “Do you see what you’ve done?”
“I never put Ethelmund up to it.” Egelric stood because his lord was standing. He had not raised his voice, but his brows were lowering darkly.
“That’s not what I mean!” Alred said. He thought he was at least taking on some of Iylaine’s petulance. “What a mess you’ve made of everything!”
“What mess? For whom?”
“For everybody!”
“For whom?” Egelric shouted louder than he, finally out of patience. “Either I’m a scoundrel, in which case this is Gunnilda’s good fortune, or I’m a good man, in which case you can hardly blame any messes on me!”
“Oh, you’re a scoundrel. I never said a good woman can’t love a scoundrel. Consider my wife!”
“Gunnilda doesn’t—” Egelric froze and looked up, as if considering whether his voice would carry as far as the bedchamber above.
“Oh, doesn’t she?” Alred said softly.
“I never promised her nor do I owe her anything.”
“Tell me you don’t care for her.”
“I don’t!”
“Ah! You said that rather quickly!”
“And if I had hesitated, you would have crowed over that, too! What is this about, Alred? Did you ride all this way only for this?”
“No! No. I don’t know.” Alred closed his eyes and let himself fall back onto the couch. Nothing ever made him feel any better. There was no satisfaction in anything.
He heard Egelric sit again as well. He knew Egelric was not a man to speak only because no one was speaking. He knew he could count on his knight to allow him a few moments of silence, and this he was granted.
“I tell you I am become a very bitter, very unhappy man,” he said finally and opened his eyes.
“I see that.”
“But you know what that is.”
“I am trying to forget.”
“I suppose it’s easy with such a wife and such a life.”
Egelric shrugged. “I cannot praise Lili highly enough, and yet I cannot allow you to forget what my life has been these past two years.”
“I know. I remember. But I can’t stop thinking that everything would have been so different if you had not… done what you did last January.” He could hear that he was growing petulant again, but he had long since passed the point of being ashamed of himself.
“I could think that everything would have been so different if I had not left Sela alone that Christmas Eve. But if I did, then I would be bitter and unhappy.”
“I suppose you’re wiser than I.”
“There has to be some advantage to being older.”
“You surpass me more in wisdom than you do years, old man,” Alred chuckled sadly. “I’m forty this year.”
“In November. I know. Same day Hetty turns twenty-two.”
“Truly?”
“So she tells me,” Egelric smiled. “She and Lili think it the funniest thing. Lili and I have the same birthday, and Hetty and you likewise.”
“Except that we are old enough to be their fathers.”
“They seem to find it more cunning of us to have been born on the same day than if we had been born in the same year.”
“I shall remember that. I should rather celebrate Hetty’s birthday on that day than be miserable about my own.”
“It would please her very much.” Egelric looked up above Alred’s head and smiled. “Speaking of Hetty.”
Alred turned to see Lady Hedwige standing on the gallery above the hall.
“Speaking of Hetty!” he cried. “I knew that trick worked with the devil, but I didn’t know it works on angels, too. Why don’t you come down a while?”
“You are not busy?” she asked.
“Not at all. Come along down. I’ve had enough ugly for the morning. Let’s have some beautiful.”
She smiled and disappeared into the stairwell.
“When’s your baby coming, again?” Alred asked Egelric.
“Martinmas, she says.”
“Perhaps he’ll be born on the eighteenth as well.”
“Oh, no, she swears it will be Martinmas.”
Egelric smiled and chuckled to himself, as if it were a private joke between him and her. The idea of Egelric and Lili sharing private jokes was almost more than Alred could bear. Fortunately Hedwige came into the hall just then to distract him.
“Lili sleeping?” Egelric asked her.
“I do not know,” she said. “I did not look.”
“Did you hear us shouting?”
“I thought I heard it.”
“I had better see whether I have awoken her,” Egelric said and stood. “Excuse me a moment.”
The idea of Egelric going up to Lili’s bed was very nearly more than Alred could bear. Of course he would not linger if his lord was waiting below, but he might permit himself a kiss, a caress… as if she were any slut fit for nothing better than lying around on his bed awaiting his pleasure.
“We have not seen you a while?” Hedwige smiled shyly at him.
“That’s so,” Alred said. “Harvest, and Lammas, and all.”
She nodded eagerly.
“But you must have all kinds of visitors out here.”
“Not so many. Sir Aengus comes. And sometimes His Majesty the King.”
“I can only assume Egelric is keeping your presence here a secret. There ought to be throngs of lovesick knights at the gate otherwise.”
She only smiled.
“Are you lonely?” he asked. “Would you like me to announce your beauty to the world?”
“I am a little lonely. But I am happy with the visitors we have. But you could come more often, and I would like it.”
“Then I shall. I certainly shall.”
“You do not…” She seemed to be shrinking into a smaller version of herself out of sheer timidity. “You do not stay away because you regret a thing you did, or said, one time when you came?”
Alred hesitated. Lili must have told her sister about the poem. It was perhaps to be expected. He knew from observing his own girls that some sisters did not keep secrets from one another.
“I regret anything I did only insofar as it has hurt or troubled any one of my friends,” he said.
“Oh! But I do not think you have hurt or troubled any of your friends.”
“I haven’t?”
“Oh, no,” she smiled eagerly, like a little girl. It was true he was old enough to be her father. He felt old enough to be her grandfather.
“I don’t think we woke her,” Egelric said as he returned, smiling to himself.
Hedwige sank shyly back against the cushions, and Alred likewise, though in his case it was out of weariness, if not out of despair. Egelric had not been long. He could scarcely have touched Lili at all. But thinking of all of the things Egelric had not had the time to do to her was more than Alred could bear.
Poor Alred.
Chapters
Oh boy. Alred does seem to have been caught up in more than his share of misunderstandings, doesn't he?