Hetty has an idea

Hetty awoke to a tug on the blankets.

“Alred?” she gasped.

“I’m sorry, Hetty,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“The least little thing wakes me these days,” she sighed.

Being awoken by her husband was no great affliction, but the trouble would be getting back to sleep again. Alred’s baby was a kicker, and it was clearly already bored with the idea of lying around for seven or eight hours at a time. She saw many sleepless nights in her future.

“Are you calling me the least little thing?” Alred laughed.

“This baby is a leaster, littler thing than you, and he wakes me all the time.”

Alred threw an arm over her and squeezed her delightfully. “Worse than Bruni?” he asked.

“Much worse.”

“I think all my children were that way. I would say it’s because it’s a boy, but I think that, of all of them, Gwynn was the worst for her rampages within the womb.”

“You did not drink?” she asked when she realized that she could not smell wine on his breath.

“Scarcely. I was trying to keep my wits about me,” he sighed and squeezed her again. “I wanted to get Sigefrith drunk and see what he would say.”

“That is not very honest, Alred,” she scolded softly, though she knew that he was in fact at wit’s end as regarded Sigefrith and his problems.

“I know it, my dear, but my son tells me there’s nothing like Hetty for forgiveness.” He squeezed her again and nuzzled his face into her hair.

“I forgive you,” she said. “I know you mean to help. What did he say?”

“Well, I found out why she was forgiving him, and, more importantly, why he thought she was forgiving him.”

“Why?”

“She was forgiving him for not having been there when the baby was born.”

“Oh. But he is a King!”

“I know, Hetty, and that’s why she forgives him. She knows he couldn’t help it. But it seems that he thought it was because she blamed him for the baby’s death.”

Hetty was so horrified she thought she must have misunderstood. “He thought she thought he killed the baby? He wasn’t even here!”

“No, no, not directly. He feared she thought that the baby died because he was a sinner, and God wanted to punish him.”

“But we are all sinners,” she whispered.

“Except for this angel,” he said and squeezed her more tightly than ever.

“No, no! I am a sinner, too!”

“If you say so,” he smiled, and then he sighed. “So she told him she doesn’t believe that. Though it is only thanks to the Old Man that she told him anything at all.”

Hetty giggled. “That’s all right then,” she said, quoting the Old Man himself.

Alred did not laugh. “No, it isn’t. I think Sigefrith feels worse than before.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I thought about it all the way home, and I can think of three possible reasons. Perhaps he does not believe her when she says she doesn’t think that. Or perhaps he himself believes that Catherine died because he was such a sinner, and he had simply transferred his own guilty conscience into his wife’s person. Or perhaps it’s neither of those, but now he has to face an unhappy wife who doesn’t blame him for anything, in which case he doesn’t know how to make her happy again.”

Hetty’s eyes filled with tears, partly at the thought of the unhappiness of her friends the King and Queen, but also with gratitude at having been given a husband who had such a deep heart and who saw so clearly into the hearts of others. Nothing in her loveless life had even allowed her to believe such men could exist.

“What can we do?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder… I wonder whether Eadie was truly the right woman for him. When she was young and shy and awkward, I always believed she would grow up and open out. But she has always remained shy and awkward, and especially with him. She tries so hard to be a perfect wife that she fails to be a good one.”

“I see,” Hetty said, and she stored this idea away for future consideration. She knew better than to try to be a perfect wife, but she hoped she was being a good wife.

“And,” Alred continued, “as clever as he is when dealing with the subtleties of men’s minds, my friend Sigefrith is an absolute simpleton when it comes to women. So he needs a simple woman. Not stupid, mind you, but not complicated. He needs something like a quiet version of your sister. Not wild and silly like Lili, but she must say what she thinks, since Sigefrith is too stupid to guess it if she doesn’t, and she must be unafraid to make mistakes.”

“Lili is good at that,” Hetty giggled.

“And Eadie is terrible at it.”

“I see.”

“She always says what she thinks she ought to say and not what she thinks, and while men such as I can recognize the deception and ignore what she says, Sigefrith only has the sensation of being constantly jarred by words out of tune with Eadie’s reality. And she’s so busy wondering whether a Queen ought to sit in a King’s lap in front of guests that she doesn’t enjoy sitting there, and Sigefrith only knows that she doesn’t enjoy sitting there, and it hurts him.”

“How sad.”

“And all of that is bad enough, but it was true two years ago. Now the girl is in worse shape from grieving for her baby. And so I can’t go to her and tell her all of that. Nor would she receive me anyway.”

“Nor me.”

“I don’t know what to do about Eadie, but I must say that I think Sigefrith would be feeling better if he weren’t constantly exposed to her. He has a remarkable ability to forget about such things when he’s far from home. If it were summer, I would contrive to take him to visit Old Aed or someone. That always cheers him up.”

“Why do you not send Eadie away instead? He was quite merry without her last Christmas.”

“That is a very tragic thing that you just said, my dear,” he sighed. “But true.”

“Why did he send her to her parents last year?”

“I don’t know. He said she was tired.”

“So, why do you not tell him that you think Eadie is looking very tired lately, and perhaps she would like a visit to her parents?”

Alred considered this for a moment. “That’s not a bad idea, Hetty. It might be good for Eadie, too. She will have her mother and father both, and she won’t have to feel guilty for not being a queen.”

“And she can take Drage, so Sigefrith will have only the older children, and he can go from house to house to house without worrying about the little one, and the cold and his bedtime.”

“I think Sigefrith would enjoy that.”

“And I think those poor girls could breathe again. They are so unhappy at home that, even when they come here, they do not want to run around and play silly with our girls.”

“That is another tragic thing you just said, my love. I agree that it would be good for both of them if they could get away from Eadie’s influence. But I fear that Brit has reasons of her own to cry.”