I don't check the forum often enough.

I don't think Alred felt at the time that he was cheating on Matilda. He may be telling himself that now though -- retroactively justifying his withdrawal from Hetty. Perhaps in a fit of sour grapes even.

I say that mainly because he seemed way too involved in his pining for Lili for him to have been feeling guilty about betraying Matilda's memory.

I think he actually started letting go of Matilda in a good way at one point -- I am thinking of that conversation he had with Dunstan when he showed him the Psalter. "Alred lends Dunstan a book." Dunstan seems to be way more determined to keep things All About Matilda than Alred was. Alred seemed to be wanting to move on so he could have another lady laying her head on his breast. He was ready to start thinking about loving someone else.

Then Lili came along and perversely preferred his protégé to him--and that seemed to have negative effects.

I really don't know what it would take to get it through Alred's head that he can be an asshole sometimes. If that idiotic revelation about the poem didn't do it, I don't know what will. He could have gotten tangled up in a "This is not what it looks like!", naked-with-Gytha type of situation, and that would have hurt Hetty less than what he told her about the poem.

Oh Lord I still don't know what to do with Alred and Hetty. I would love to hear about Egelric and Alred though.

Hetty doesn't write poems, but it would be sweet if she tried. She has already decided that a poem doesn't have to be good to mean something. Maybe Dunstan and the Old Man and the girls will each want to surprise their father with a poem for [Insert Special Occasion Here], and Hetty will decide to add hers to the pile.

Ooh, or she could secretly write one while the kids are busy with theirs, and Gwynn finds it and thinks it was supposed to go in the pile, and it gets in there without Hetty's intervention. Another misplaced poem saves the day! Or at least gets the day on the track to being saved.

About Alred's parents: We don't know much about his mom except that she was nice but presumably not very strong-willed. Alred grew up with his paternal grandfather, his father and mother, and his little brother Yware. His father was at least verbally abusive with him (see "Alred sees no poetry" and "Alred tells the truth") and I am fairly sure we have seen his grandfather described as stern.

His father and grandfather died within months of each other when he was ten, and his little brother died when Alred was twelve, leaving Alred alone with his widowed mother till she died in 1061. He has no family, and doesn't seem to have memories of any particular friends from that period either. He doesn't seem to come to life until he teamed up with Sigefrith's crew in the army of Wessex back when Earl Harold was busy subduing Wales. (Maybe he went to war in response to his mother's death? Nothing left to live for, right?)

I was thinking of their birthday too but they were born in November! That puts us in late 2013.