Ethelwyn lets fly the dart

It was all as mortifying as Ethelwyn had feared—or not quite, but nearly.

It seemed the Duchess had not participated in this treachery, which was what had hurt him more than anything, and indeed he was beginning to believe that Mouse had not had a hand in it either.

If she had, she was apparently regretting it now. She was looking as miserable as he felt. If he’d had a magical device for extracting himself from this situation, he had sympathy enough to have shared it with her.

But otherwise it was as humiliating as he had feared.

They had entered the hall together to the sound of scarcely muffled titters. Everyone knew that Mouse had fallen into the moat with him. Everyone knew, he was certain, that she had promised to wear red boots to his funeral and dance around his grave.

And everyone found it quite amusing that they be obliged to dance together—everyone except the Duchess, who appeared blissfully unaware of this entire farce, and Mouse herself, who seemed to find dancing with him while alive not nearly as delightful as the anticipation of dancing around his grave.

They had all laughed to themselves, but no one had said a word, and Ethelwyn thought this far crueler than jeers. If he had been teased outright, he thought he might have been permitted to make a scene and retire from the room—ignobly, perhaps, but at least he would be gone.

Instead, pride and the obligations of a gentleman required him to submit to this more subtle humiliation.

He knew how brittle a façade was his own pride. Though it ordinarily sufficed to hide the hollow places where the strength of the man should have been, it could only crumble away before the mockery of all these people he had thought his friends.

There would remain only the bare framework of the gentleman. That had been erected by his mother all those years before, and it was what had always permitted him to suffer silently, nobly, and to tell himself that he was a better boy and a better man than those who tormented him.

That structure had stood through stronger storms than this, and it would not fail him tonight, though all the human pride and vanity he clapped over it fell away. But oh, in the meantime, how cold the wind that blew through the naked posts and beams!

To crown it all, Egelric had succeeded in pulling him into line between himself and the Duke. It was obvious that Egelric had had some hand in planning this trick, and as it was Alred’s castle, it stood to reason that he had at least been aware that Ethelwyn and Mouse would meet tonight.

And since Egelric danced with his wife and the Duke with Lady Wynflaed, Ethelwyn was obliged to face his lady’s smirks on the one side and Mouse’s sister’s anxious glances on the other. Lady Wynflaed apparently believed that he was likely to lean over at any moment and bite her sister’s head off with a single snap of his jaws. He wished he could tell her that if anyone stood a risk of bodily injury that night, it was one or both of the gentlemen on either side of him.

“You dance very well after all, Mouse,” Egelric said mildly after the first dance was well underway.

“As you said, it is my partner who makes it seem so,” she replied.

“I’ve always envied the ladies who have the good fortune of being able to dance with Wyn,” Alred said. “Though he’s not the liveliest one of the bunch,” he added, leaning over to glance down the line towards Sir Sigefrith’s prancing at the far end.

“He’s livelier than a dead man,” Egelric snickered.

“Perhaps he’s too lively for you, Mouse,” Lili said, though the grin she sneaked over her shoulder was for her husband. “I hear you like your partners to have a little less… spirit in them.”

“I used to think so,” Mouse said. “But I have recently learned that if I can find a man who likes to leap, I can’t resist leaping with him.”

Ethelwyn looked at her in shock, but she was not smirking at Egelric as he had expected. She was looking directly into his face with eyes that were pleading, and with a hesitant half-​smile. He wondered whether he was supposed to accept it as some sort of apology coming simultaneous to the affront. It seemed not only cruel but craven.

Alred laughed appreciatively. “Be careful not to leap in over your head, my dear.”

“I do know how to swim,” she assured him.

“Ah, but this is Advent season, little Mouse, and my wife has invented the cunning rule that says we may dance so long as we keep one foot on the floor at all times, or on the bottom, as it were.”

“That is why I let Ethelwyn go first. I use the wetting of his curls to judge the depth.”

“And how deep does he go?” Lili laughed wickedly.

“Henny!” Egelric groaned.

Mouse, fortunately, did not seem to have noticed what the old devil and his bride found so amusing. Unfortunately she made matters worse by saying, “Never more than six feet under.”

“Six feet! Mercy! A murderer!” Lili shrieked with laughter.

“Henny!” Egelric scolded. “We have a maiden among us!”

“What was that? A maid, you said?”

“I think you are mistaken, my wee hen. I said a maiden. But it is a common mistake.”

“I don’t see how one could be fooled,” she sniffed.

“All maids must have been maidens at one point or another,” Egelric observed.

“Ach, but not all maidens are maids, and that’s where one should take care.”

“Or risk finding one’s foot in one’s mouth,” Egelric nodded, “not to say in one’s moat.”

“What was that?” Lili asked. “Finding one’s boot in one’s mouth?”

“I said foot. I had not considered how it ought to be shod. What is Mouse wearing, for example?”

“I am wearing dancing slippers, of course,” Mouse said. And then she added the one word Ethelwyn expected and feared: “Red,” smugly.

Ethelwyn did not understand. She had seemed so sheepish, so ill-​at-​ease, and almost—he had not thought so then, but he saw it now—apologetic.

But since then she had regained all her poise, all her impudence—and she had found them by joining the others in mocking him.

And yet it had always been so. He had known a few boys, ordinarily kind enough when alone with him, who would become as vicious as the others when they were swept into the gang that was tormenting him. His mother had told him that such boys lacked the courage to continue being kind when the penalty for refusing to mock him consisted of being mocked themselves.

So Mouse lacked that courage too. He admitted himself disappointed. He had thought that such a spirited girl—even if impudent—ought to have courage to spare. He realized he had admired her only now, when he had ceased to admire her.

“Oh, that’s funny,” Lili giggled. “I had thought you might have worn red boots after all.”

Ethelwyn could feel the slight, despairing smile on his own lips that had always lit there when he was being teased with words alone.

He too could smile along with those who teased him, a traitor to himself. Like those other, ordinarily kind boys, he had always cherished the hope that by joining in the mockery of himself, the other, crueler boys might like him better. The penalty was that he liked himself less.

“I would never wear red boots to such a party as this,” Mouse said.

“Oh, no?” Egelric leered. “To what sort of occasion would one wear red boots?”

Between the three of them, Egelric and Lili and Mouse had crafted and polished and sharpened a weapon: the most brilliant barb of the evening, the straightest shaft, formed precisely to fit between the chinks of his rickety paling, and aimed directly at his heart. They would make a joke of his own death.

“I don’t know,” Mouse said. “Ethelwyn, to what sort of occasion do you suppose one could wear red boots?”

Ethelwyn was aghast. She had taken their weapon and turned it about to place it in his own hands. Was he expected to increase their entertainment by mocking himself?

Though the dance would have him turn his head aside, he had to look at her. He could not understand.

She swept her arms down with his in the dance, clapped along with the others, and swept her arms up again, but all the while she was looking back at him. There were those dark eyes again with their long lashes, pleading, and that half-​smile, pleading, pleading with him to forgive her… or to understand…

“Perhaps,” he said weakly, “to a funeral?”

“That’s an idea!” she laughed. “Well, you are all invited to mine to see. I declare that when I turn up my toes for the last time, they shall be shod in red boots, they shall!”