Dunstan plays a new game

“Ach, no! You have already set up the game!” Lady Hedwige cried. “I hope I did not keep you waiting long.”

“If you had, I would have already started playing by myself,” Dunstan said.

“Can one play alone at chess?”

“I can!” he groaned.

“Do you not have anyone to play with you? Not your father? Or your friends?”

“Not often. No one I know likes to sit and be quiet long enough to play a game of chess.”

“I do.”

“That’s why I like you,” he smiled at her.

She blushed and smiled back at him, and Dunstan was well pleased. She was the only young lady he knew who seemed to find him intimidating, which was to say that she was shyer than he. And indeed, it made him rather bold.

“Does not the Princess play?” she asked.

“Which Princess?” he gasped. “Brit? She can’t sit still long enough for me to set up the game.”

“Not even to please you?” she smiled shyly.

“I’m not certain she’s old enough to be considering how best to please me,” Dunstan mumbled, his own shyness stealing over him at last.

“She is twelve, is she not?”

“Is that old enough?”

“I do not know. I was in a convent when I was twelve. The only young men I knew lived in stories. Ach! Have I made a mistake already?” she asked as he captured one of her pawns.

“We shall say you sacrificed it as part of your larger strategy,” he winked. He was not afraid to wink at Hetty.

“If you like, but I am afraid I do not know what my larger strategy is.”

“I shall reveal it to you as we play.”

“And as you capture my pieces one by one!” she smiled.

He laughed, and then they played a while in silence. Dunstan did not feel a need to talk to fill the silence when he was with Hetty. Indeed, it was Hetty who broke it when she asked hesitantly, “Does your father not play? He seems… quiet.”

“My father? Seems quiet? You do know who my father is, don’t you?” Dunstan laughed.

“Is he not?”

“Well… he is. But no one ever guesses it—he laughs and jokes and talks so much around people.”

“I think he is shy on the inside,” Hetty said and blushed tremendously.

“I wonder how you ever noticed it,” Dunstan murmured. He admitted himself impressed. Even those who noticed there was something not quite natural about his father’s gaiety usually attributed it to the wine.

“I only watch,” she shrugged and busied herself straightening her chess pieces so each stood in the center of its little square.

Dunstan wondered whether he had stumbled across another such as he, who profited from her relative invisibility by observing the world around her, and especially other people. He was suddenly inspired to ask her, “Do you write poetry?”

“Write it?” she laughed as if the idea were absurd, though he knew she knew how to read and write. “Never. I like to read it.”

“So do I.”

“Do you write any?”

“Well,” Dunstan laughed awkwardly. “One might say I try. I can’t write anything worth reading because I’ve never done anything in my life, and nothing has ever happened to me.”

“I would not say that,” she said slowly. “Perhaps you cannot write a great song about fighting a battle or falling in love, but you can write about the things in your own experience.”

“Playing chess with a beautiful lady is very nearly the most poetic thing that I have ever experienced,” he laughed. “It’s certainly the closest I’ve ever come to love or war.”

“If you mean me, I hope you will not write about it. You will have to tell how badly I played.”

“I shall write that I was too distracted by your beauty to notice how you played.”

“You are not so distracted that I am able to win,” she smiled.

“It must be because you are distracted by my own.” Truly he was feeling bold! There was some fun in it after all. It was a shame she was more than seven years older than he. He was beginning to see what Eadwyn and Bertie saw in such a pastime.

She blushed as much as ever and seemed too shy to respond to this sally. Instead she said, “For example, you have seen fifteen springs already, each one different. There is much poetry in the springtime. Also fifteen autumns. There is poetry there, too. I believe I like it better than the spring, though it is sadder.”

Dunstan was silent for a moment. It did seem a shame to flatter and flirt with such a lady when she was capable of more interesting conversation. “I believe I like it better than the spring,” he said, “precisely because it is sadder.”

She looked up from the chess board and gave him a look of understanding. “Yes, I think perhaps that is why.”

“Have you ever read any of my father’s poetry?” he asked. He could not hope to interest her with his own, but he though he might permit himself to make use of his father’s. “I don’t mean ‘The Wanderer’ or his other heroic poems, or the things he sings to us when we are gathered together. I mean the poems he writes and does not read to others.”

“I have, a little,” she said softly.

“I’m glad he showed you. He must have known you would appreciate it. You should feel honored, though. He doesn’t show many people.”

“I do appreciate it. And am honored.”

“Did part of your larger strategy involve sacrificing your bishop?” he smiled as he took the piece from the board.

“Oh no!”

“It is rather ungentlemanly of my knights to attack members of the clergy, but I suppose that’s what is happening in Rome at the moment, or close to it.”

“I always forget about the knights.”

“So does Pope Gregory, I’m afraid. What did you think of Father Aelfden?” he asked abruptly. The priest held a special terror for him, and he wondered how Aelfden affected this shy lady.

“He is very… much, isn’t he?” she smiled hesitantly.

“Oh, he’s very quiet and still, and suddenly he turns to look at you and you see all the sins of your life parade before your eyes.”

“Yes, something like that. Lili and I used to wonder about him, when we were young and read one of his books. He seemed like something more than a mortal man to us: if he could understand the Unseen, he must have seen it, we thought.”

“I see!”

“I do not know how Lili could bear to talk to him so long,” she shuddered. “But I am happy she did. It meant he never spoke to me at all.”

“I know how you feel! My brother keeps him busy with his unceasing questions. The Old Man isn’t afraid of him at all.”

“And so he does not talk to you?”

“Oh, I have talked with him many times. He often stays with us, though probably less now since he will not be at the chapel any longer. But whenever the old man is around I needn’t fear. Father Aelfden doesn’t even notice me when my brother is there. On second thought, nobody does!”

“It is the same with my sister and me,” Hetty said. “Sometimes someone will tell me about something that happened, even though I was there and saw it with them. Because they never even noticed me. Especially if Lili is there.”

“That happens to me too!” Dunstan cried. “All the time.”

“Because of Lili?” she smiled.

“No! Because of my father, or my brother, or anyone. Sometimes no one at all. I am simply invisible.”

“So am I.”

“Now, I doubt that. You’re lovely enough that people certainly do notice you. At least the gentlemen do. I think it is only Lili who draws attention away from you because she is so… bright. Lili is like the sun and you are like the moon. If they are both in the sky, the moon can’t be seen at all, or only faintly, because of the sun’s light. But the moon alone is magnificent.”

“That is a very pretty compliment,” she said, blushing very prettily.

“It’s true. And many people prefer the moon, you know.”

“But I think many people prefer Lili,” she smiled.

“I don’t know about that. Perhaps most men do like the sun better than the moon. The moon is a little sad,” he said thoughtfully, “and cold, and lonely. But just as you and I like the autumn better because it is sad, so do some men like the moon better for those reasons. I think poetic people do.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’m certain of it. My father must have written a dozen poems about the moon for every one he has written about the sun.”

Hetty only smiled and blushed, and lost her other bishop in her charming confusion. Dunstan was well pleased.