“Mama Gunnie!” Gwynn threw her arms around the neck of her old nurse.
Gunnilda laughed and kissed the girl’s cheeks. “My little lady!”
“And for me?” Alred asked hopefully.
“Your Grace may have a piece of pie,” Gunnilda said. “I know that’s why you came anyway. And why do you have a big blue eye peeking out of the depths of your cloak?”
Gunnilda attempted to peer down inside, and a high-pitched giggle came up out of those depths.
Alred said, “I thought something was squirming around in there.”
Gunnilda laughed. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know she was in there!” Once she had extracted baby Brunhilde from his cloak, she asked, “What are you doing carrying this poor baby around again without her mother?”
“I should be just as happy carrying her around with her mother,” Alred said, “but her mother was not, as you would say, ‘to home.’”
“So you took this poor baby!”
“Thusly I am guaranteed to see her mother today!” Alred laughed.
“You took her as a hostage, what!”
“That is true, but my terms are easy. I shall release her to her mother again in exchange for a kiss.”
“First you have to get her back from me!” Gunnilda teased as she carried the burbling baby back into the sitting room.
“For a kiss?” Alred asked sweetly.
“You will have to do better than that!”
“With pleasure!”
“That was not what I meant!” Gunnilda laughed. “But it would have to be something fine to be worth this pretty girl. Doesn’t she smell nice?” she sighed as she cuddled Bruni against her neck. “And isn’t she just the sweetest, silliest baby you ever seen?”
“She may be,” Alred said thoughtfully.
“One would think you were her own Papa.”
“Are you trying to say I am the sweetest, silliest man you know, Gunnilda?”
“You may be!”
“But one would wonder how a funny-looking, dark little man such as I could have sired such a pretty little blonde baby as this Bruni.”
“We shall see about that in a year or two,” Gunnilda nodded sagely.
“Oh, are you planning for my future babies already?”
“I hope you are! You’re bound to have some, you know.”
“He had better!” Gwynn cried.
“Is that so?” he asked her.
“I think it would be a fine thing to have a baby around again,” Gwynn said. “The closest thing we have at home is the Old Man, and he hasn’t been cute or cuddly in years.”
“Oh, pish!” Gunnilda cried. “He’s cuter and cuddlier than any seven-year-old has any right to be! With his curly head, what!”
“I have just recalled,” Alred said, “that you are always telling me how much he resembles his father.”
“And so he does.”
“So far today I am sweet, silly, cute, and cuddly. Are you certain you don’t want to kiss me?”
“I am certain you don’t want to kiss me, when you have this girl’s pretty Mama to kiss.”
“And it is true I had forgotten about your handsome husband. Who is also significantly larger than I am and works hard with his arms all day.”
“That’s so,” Gunnilda said softly.
“Speaking of handsome husbands, have you been to see Iylaine today?”
“Not today. Why?”
“Because my lady has been begging me to take her, and I wondered whether Iylaine was feeling up to receiving visitors today. If she’s tired I don’t want to surprise her with this silly baby, in particular.”
“Oh, this silly baby isn’t any trouble!” Gunnilda smiled. “Anyway, that girl had better start thinking about getting accustomed to having little ‘turtles’ around.”
“Turtles!” Alred gasped. “Did you hear what she called you, my Bruni?”
“That’s simply what Iylaine calls babies,” Gwynn explained, sighing over the stupidity of her father. “The room they have for babies, when they have some, is called the turtle room.”
“But—why?” he asked.
“I don’t know!” Gwynn groaned.
“Because that Iylaine still thinks she’s the only Baby what has the right to use the name,” Gunnilda said.
“I think she’s simply being discreet,” Alred said. “And I think it quite endearing.”
“Well, turtles or babies, I hope she has one or both before long,” Gunnilda said. “That’s just the thing she needs to settle her once and for all. She won’t be running away then.”
“She’s only fifteen, Gunnilda.”
“Well? I had Bertie when I wasn’t much more than sixteen.”
“Perhaps your life would have been different if you hadn’t,” Alred said gravely.
“Well, I don’t know but I guess it would have,” she agreed. “But I wouldn’t have had Bertie.”
“True enough.”
“And it would give that poor girl something to do, besides sit alone in her house all day.”
“Now, Gunnilda, I happen to think she likes sitting alone in her house all day. The last time I saw her, she was telling me how wonderful it was to sit in her house or in her yard and not hear a single voice or a single sound of men and women working.”
“Well, I don’t know but I guess it’s a change from living in a castle.”
“Perhaps she will like to spend a little time alone in the quiet before she has a shrieking turtle in her charge.”
“Well, she’ll have had at least nine months to spend in the quiet. Or so we hope!” Gunnilda laughed.
“Let’s hope she has a little longer,” Alred sighed. “She’s not strong.”
“That’s so. But with the Warty Mother to cook and do for her, she’ll fatten up in no time. Turtle or no turtle!”
Gwynn giggled. “Gunnie, if she has a baby—turtle—right away, when will it come?”
“Well, let’s see,” Gunnilda said thoughtfully. “I guess we have to start counting from when she ran away with Sir Malcolm…”
“December,” Alred muttered.
“Oh!” Gwynn cried. “Wouldn’t it be sweet to have a baby for Christmas?”
“Wouldn’t it?” Gunnilda agreed.
“And wouldn’t it be sweet if she had twins? Malcolm is a twin, and his mother had a second pair of twins not long ago!”
“They say twins often have twins,” Gunnilda nodded.
Alred could not bear it. He was of the opinion that the last thing the poor confused girl needed just then was a baby. He would speak to Gwynn later, but he did not know how to explain the matter to Gunnilda. In her he saw Egelric’s own fear that Iylaine would be lost to the elves, and so she could only rejoice over anything that would bind Iylaine more tightly to Malcolm. But Alred believed Iylaine was already too tightly bound.
He knew of a sure way to change the subject, and though he knew it would hurt Gunnilda, and though it grieved him to do it, he was too entirely out of patience with her and especially with Egelric.
He now regretted having been too preoccupied with his own problems to have seen how Egelric was hastening Iylaine’s marriage. He regretted not having questioned Vash further when he had spoken of jealousy. He regretted he could not do more to protect the girl from all who wished to arrange her life according to their own notions of the fitness of things.
He could do very little now, in truth, but he did what he could.
“What about you, my fair Gunnilda?” he asked. “For what holiday are you planning the arrival of your next turtle?”
Gwynn giggled, but Gunnilda grew pale. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t planning anything.”
“You had better be planning,” he lectured her, “as you so recently said to me. As we know from the old story, turtles do take a while to get where they are going, but slow and steady, they always arrive in the end!”
Gwynn laughed.
“Well I don’t know but I guess they do,” Gunnilda said. “But, meanwhile, didn’t you two want some pie?”
Chapters
Hmm, is Alred, perhaps, Team Vash? I always knew I loved him. And yes, it is way too soon for Iylaine to be having turtles. Not that I wish any ill to the turtle Vash seems to have detected, but she is not ready. But then, from what I hear, no one ever is...