Brinstan presumes to remind

There were very few men left alive who had been born in the last millennium, but Lord Brinstan’s grandfather and namesake was one of them. The elder Brinstan was old enough to have been his wife’s father and his daughter Githa’s grandfather, but he had outlived them both.

At eighty-​​four, he could have been young Brinstan’s great-​​grandfather, but he was still spry enough to have walked out to the stables to meet Brinstan and his brother Ethelmer when they had visited him that day. The day was the anniversary of his wife’s birth, and it was only the second time it had come around since her death. Both times Brinstan had made a point of spending it with him so he would not have to spend it alone.

When he returned home, late though it was, Brinstan saw the back of his father’s ruddy head across the hall. Brinstan knew that since his mother’s death, his father had a habit of sitting up before the fire in the hall after everyone else had gone to bed. He also knew that the habit of sitting up was very old with his father, but that while his mother lived he had sat before the fire in their bedroom.

“Are you waiting up for me?” Brinstan asked as he crossed the hall.

“Brin?” his father smiled dreamily. “I didn’t think you were coming home tonight at all.”

“My brother stayed. I thought you might need me.”

“I shall certainly find something for you to do if you’re here. Your brother was clever enough to know it, too,” he chuckled. “How is your grandfather?”

“The same as when I saw him for his birthday,” Brinstan said as he settled in next to his father on the couch.

“Still getting around?”

“Same as ever.”

“If he keeps it up, he will have lived in three different centuries.”

“He must believe he won’t make it. He has started asking me when I mean to give him some great-​​grandchildren,” Brinstan groaned.

“Does he think boys who still like to visit their old grandfathers are interested in such things as girls?”

“I shall still visit him after I’m married.”

“I should visit him more often,” his father sighed.

Brinstan saw his chance. “He tells me he wishes he had had more children so that I could have some girl cousins that might entice me into visiting him more often. He says it worked very well for you.”

“Oh, yes,” his father laughed sadly.

Brinstan knew he was treading dangerous ground: he was generally very careful to avoid any subject that might inspire his father to think about his own inevitable betrothal, but he had made a promise to his Princess.

“Grandfather says you made a real pest of yourself when my mother was young.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Why did you wait so long to marry her, then? Weren’t you twenty-​​seven or so?”

“Almost. I thought you knew that story, Brin.”

“Not truly,” Brinstan lied.

“I was never meant to be baron, you know. I was never meant to be anything. My father always said that the reason the Norsemen lost most of their territory here was their habit of dividing their inheritance equally among their sons. After three or four generations, all that was left of a great man’s domain was a lot of little manors that could be gathered up like scattered marbles by the next great man to come along.”

“But my grandfather had no sons, only my mother. So all he had would go to her and her children. She could have married anyone she wanted.”

“Of course, Brin, but I had nothing to offer her. A wealthy woman does not marry a poor man. Your grandfather wanted her to marry my brother. Ethelmer was to have all of our mother’s lands. But then the Lady Madrun and her family arrived, and Ethelmer never had eyes for any other women after that.”

“So then Grandfather had to settle for you?”

“No! He didn’t want me until the King gave me all that land in the valley.”

“But it was still less than what Grandfather has.”

His father shrugged. “It was enough. I am certain your mother did her part to convince him to accept me anyway, though she always claimed she didn’t. She loved me, you know. All her life.”

“I know.”

Brinstan let the words hang between them for a moment, and not only to increase their effect on his father.

“So,” he finally said, “even crusty old Grandfather thought that my mother’s love counted for something.”

“I suppose so,” his father said thoughtfully. “He wanted her to be happy, too. You know, ‘crusty’ as he is, your grandfather is not the sort of man to treat his daughter as coin to be spent for his own benefit.”

“I know. Are you?”

His father squinted warily at him. “That’s a little different, Brinstan. I am Baron. So will you be. Are you afraid I shall marry you to someone you won’t like?”

“A little,” Brinstan admitted. “But mostly I am worried about the girls. I think it must be harder for girls. Don’t you? Because their entire life is nothing but their husband and children.”

“I haven’t even thought about your sister yet. She’s only four.”

“I know, but what about Ana?”

“Ana is to marry Lord Windhlith’s brother. You know that. I don’t think she will be unhappy with him.”

“She does.”

“Oh ho! Are you in the young lady’s confidence?”

“A little. And I think the situation is a little similar, isn’t it? She’s a wealthy young lady – effectively the only child of her parents, since Freya lost her dowry.”

“And Ceolbriht is a less wealthy man than she,” his father agreed.

“Yes, but that is different. Because she doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her, whereas my mother loved you and you loved her.”

“They scarcely know one another! Your mother and I were cousins and knew one another all our lives. In this case there is no lovelorn cousin ‘making a pest of himself’ as your grandfather put it, but otherwise I – ”

“But there is!” Brinstan interrupted.

“Is what?”

“There is a lovelorn cousin.”

His father appeared stunned, his gaze cast vaguely upon the wall behind Brinstan’s head as if in search of the name of the mysterious lovelorn cousin. Suddenly his eyes went wide. “Good God, Brinstan! Don’t tell me you’re in love with Ana!”

“I? No!” Brinstan gasped, startled himself.

“Who then? For God’s sake! Don’t scare me like that again! Your room is two doors down from hers!”

“Never! She’s – she’s pretty, but – ”

“Who then?”

“Eadwyn!”

“Eadwyn? You mean Eada’s brother Eadwyn?”

“The very one.”

“Brinstan…” his father said ominously.

“Wait! I don’t know whether he loves her or not, but Ana loves him.”

“Brinstan…”

“But listen, Father. If he does love her, then it’s just the same: they’re cousins, and Ana is wealthy while Wyn only has a little land in the valley.”

“But, Brinstan!”

“And I think it’s really quite unfair, don’t you?” Brinstan blurted. “Freya disobeyed you and married a man you did not like, and now her ‘punishment’ is that she is happy, and they are wealthy even if she didn’t have her dowry. Whereas Ana is a good, obedient girl who would not elope with Eadwyn even if Eadwyn were dishonorable enough to try, and her ‘reward’ is being married to a man she does not love, and being sent so far away that she might never see her sister again. I think you can do a little better than that, Father,” he concluded.

“Oh, do you?” his father said coldly.

Brinstan was paralyzed. He had been treading on dangerous ground, but he had gone too far: now his feet were hanging over the open air.

“Unfortunately,” his father said, “you are not yet Baron, and therefore it is not for you to do better or worse than I.”

“That’s not what I meant…” Brinstan murmured.

“A marriage between Ana and Eadwyn would gain us nothing. Don’t you see that? It might make them happy; it might not. I am already married to Eadwyn’s sister. We do not need another alliance with that family.”

“But, Father, Ana isn’t looking for an alliance. She’s looking for a husband. You’re trying to spend her like coin to buy yourself an alliance.”

“Do you think yourself clever because you can turn my own words against me?”

“I don’t,” Brinstan said meekly.

“Brinstan, it is not even clear to me that Ana ‘loves’ Eadwyn, and still less so that Eadwyn has any feelings for Ana. It does not sound as if you know yourself. At the very least I would have thought you might have verified these suppositions of yours before talking about them with me.”

“I already did talk to Ana. But I didn’t mean to talk to you about them tonight,” Brinstan said ruefully. “Not about Wyn and Ana. I only meant to get you thinking…”

“Thinking about what?”

Brinstan winced. Once again he had gone too far. “About Mother…”

“Will you use your mother against me too?” his father sighed.

“Don’t you ever ask yourself any more: ‘What would Githa do?’”

His father was silent. Brinstan thought he had definitely gone too far this time.

Finally his father said, “I didn’t know you knew about that.”

“Mother told me. She thought it very funny. But she was wise, wasn’t she?”

“Wise… in a way,” his father nodded. “But more than that she was good. Do you understand? If she ever told me to do something, I always knew it was the right thing to do. I didn’t always like it, and I didn’t always do it, and I suppose some of her ideas were foolish – but they were good. If she was ever wrong, it was because she was a good creature in a bad world, and she didn’t always take that into account.”

“So what would she have done about Ana?”

“Brin,” his father sighed.

“You know what Theobald would do and you know what Osfrey would do. But what would Githa do?”

His father did not answer at first, and when he did he did not address the question. “Can you believe I used to agonize for hours over that question?” he laughed sadly. “When Githa herself was right upstairs? I had only to get up to ask her. Can you believe your father was such a fool? But I suppose it was good practice for living without her!”

Brinstan had seldom seen his father cry since he had remarried. He was beginning to see just how far he had gone with his “too far.” It had seemed like a simple thing when the Princess had proposed it, but now it seemed one of the cruelest, coldest things he had ever done. He had presumed to “remind” his father of how he had loved his first wife.

“I think you should go to bed,” his father said. “I was about to go myself, and now I fear I have another hour to spend before the fire.”

“I’m sorry,” Brinstan murmured.

“I’m certain you are,” his father sighed. “You’re a good boy. But you’re only thirteen, Brinstan. If the solutions seem simple to you, it is only because you are too young to see how complicated are the problems.”